Weeknight
by Kaitsurinu
Summary: HPDM. Harry makes the repeated mistake of sneaking out after hours to visit the Quidditch Pitch on weeknights, but not alone.
1. Snake Fed on Jealousy and Want

A/N: This is my first attempt at the Harry Potter fandom and also that of HPDM, so please give comments and constructive criticism. It's a very tricky relationship to get right. I hope to only get better with more practice. Enjoy.

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Weeknight

Part I – Snake Fed on Jealousy and Want

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It wasn't the best idea in hindsight. It wasn't the smartest thing to be doing on a weeknight with a Charms scroll due the next morning and only a few curly scratches as of yet on the roll of parchment lying next to his bed—a bed with two pillows Transfigured out of pens lumped beneath the scarlet and gold comforter holding his stead while he roamed the corridors. It was not something Hermione would approve of should it drift down to her ears, and an offense that would earn him a snubbed noise, a turned shoulder and a whip of hair as she walked out, leaving him with no idea of how to begin to finish his scroll before he stepped into Flitwick's classroom. So no one was going to know.

With no shoes, he noticed immediately noticed when he'd left the range of the dormitory warming charms, but he made less noise. And with his body wrapped around his broomstick as well as a rock could wrap around a stick, trying to keep it beneath the invisibility cloak, it was rough enough. The straw kept scraping on the floor when he was sure it was hidden, and when he hiked it off the floor, pressing it harder into his chest and against his temple, it hurt and he could see the tips of his toes as he walked.

But when he saw the pitch through the stone columns, it was worth the pain and the risk of after-class detention and his own broomstick riding up further than after shooting across the pitch and swinging backwards at top speed. A night flight. And there were no clouds to blind the stars.

That afternoon, a storm had rolled in thick and dark over the mountains and poured for hours. It effectively killed their only day of practice that week. It drove Harry to curse out loud, having taken no more than four steps out of the shelter of the corridor onto the grassy hub before the clouds ripped open its thunderous seams and drowned the school. A few of his younger teammates looked at him, nearly sallow, from the pure force of the words.

His entire team was disappointed and missed a crucial time to condition, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Tomorrow, it would be Slytherin's turn as kings of the pitch (being the only ones there), and the day after that, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff after that, etc, and forthwith locked in a strict training regiment. And the infamous Snake and Lion match was only a week away, Gryffindor versus Slytherin. Only one more practice was cutting it close.

All he could do was sneak out illicitly at night and hope to work out a strategy on his own. Or, should he find it more impossible than usual to concoct a winning plan without any players to base said plan upon, he would ride out the frustration and hope that something struck him the next morning while Flitwick shook his head at his parchment.

Either would do on a starry night like tonight.

Even with the cloak hanging heavy on his hunched back and a rigid broomstick inflicting a distinct ache in his lower back, icy cold toes, the smell of the cool night air mingling with the rain-soaked earth was tempting. It would smell brilliant on the wind as he coursed the pitch, making each loop faster and faster, diving and wheeling with nothing to hinder him but his own furthest limitations.

As he neared the pitch, about to drop off into the grass and make a beeline, he let his eyes drift close, his glasses pressed tight against his nose from the broomstick, and take an eager breath. A few more steps and he could shed the cloak, uncurl from his excruciating coil, and kick off from the sopping ground. It would be great. He wouldn't have to live in his world until he came back down to solid ground, he wouldn't see anyone, he wouldn't hear anything but the wind hissing in his ears, jealous of his speed.

He couldn't cover those few steps fast enough.

But as the final column moved out of his line of sight, something caught the slim moonlight and glow of the stars, weaving around the garish yellow and black tower and then plummeting to the grass, scraping the ground and arching straight back up, as smooth as a coil of a cat's tail. And Harry was pretty sure there was no house elf in possession of a broom on the grounds.

He uttered another curse that would turn a second-year sallow and quiet as he stepped out and neared the edge of the pitch.

Keeping his uncomfortable position beneath the cloak, he came close enough to see the shape on the broom. It began a lazy circle coiling up into the sky, then began skimming the oval-shaped pitch, making the flags on the towers dance in the drag. Someone else had apparently hatched the same plan and gotten there first. And unless it was someone who he could trust not to rat on him, he was probably out of luck for tonight.

A few more steps and he could see the figure's dark clothes, slung over the broom, drifting down into another dive. Whoever it was, he was not happy with them for making him hobble uncomfortably the rest of the way, still twisted up underneath the cloak. He stopped beside the Gryffindor tower, still stooped over. The figure kicked off from the grass, not seeming to notice his presence, and lifted and lifted, arching into the sky at the most leisurely pace. Harry could practically see the carefree and tender lines of the body wrapped around the broom, in a transcendental and pure state of abandon.

He was feeling a little jealous, yes.

Harry could see through the cloak, but the iridescent, enchanted material often distorted his vision, making edges blurred and images shimmer. He stared up at the figure as it wound higher and higher. He could make out little more than the dark clothes and pale skin, but that could be anybody in possession of a broom and simply clever enough to sneak out at night past Filch.

Finally, the discomfort of hunching around his broomstick grew unbearable and he accepted the risk he took by pulling off the cloak. He shrunk it, folded it up, and slid it into his back pocket. Taking a distinct breath of relief, he uncoiled from his broom and threw a leg over it properly. His back and knee joints gave sounds of relief as well. The cold night air ran into his lungs deep and clean, and he looked anxiously up to the sky, watching for the figure. It had stopped and now hovered, waiting on high.

Harry forgot his caution and instead chose the liberating sensation of digging his toes into the dirt, feeling its resistance, then kicking off with all his strength and flying up and out. Becoming totally intoxicated with freedom, but linked with every alert pore of his body as the air rushed outside and magic thrummed, grinning, inside. This was worth more than the agony of a week's detention, a bad mark, _and_ a lecture from Hermione. It was a runner's high without a foot on the ground; it was ascension to Heaven without death. So Harry didn't think much more than once when he launched upward to match the other rider's height, and there was a broad grin across his face as he finally leveled off, the tip of his broom facing the opposite direction of the other rider.

"Hullo," he breathed out happily, mouth still slung wide in a smile. He didn't know what to do with it when it finally hit him that he was smiling directly at Draco Malfoy, glowing pale and surprisingly quiet underneath the moon. And he was giving Harry a stare, almost as if he didn't know how to respond to such a cheery and fair hello, and halfway opened his mouth.

But Harry beat him to it. "Oh. Never mind," he amended, and slowly floated downward.

There was a moment of silence before a sharp voice followed him. "What kind of civilized greeting is _that_, Potter?" Silky and toxic, all at once. A wasp in a honeycomb. It took a certain type of artistry Harry had to admit he did not have to be as meticulous as that, but he did not have the want to deal with it tonight, either.

Harry let out a long and gloomy breath, still drifting away. So he _was_ out of luck.

"Goodnight and sweet dreams, _Malfoy_," he drawled unhappily, waving once as he motored away. "Is that better?"

A sharp wind cut downward and ruffled his hair. Malfoy whirled and dropped, reining his broom hard to match Harry's descent, still facing the opposite end of the pitch. "Now you're just being deliberately unkind, Potter. It doesn't suit someone of your House. I think an apology on your part is in order." His chin lifted defiantly, but Harry knew the waspy smirk of confidence was gone. Wiped clean, he thought with satisfaction.

"I don't see the wrong," Harry said, matching the gaze. He'd seen and countered worse. "So no."

Malfoy had to kick out another swing to match Harry's casual descent, gripping the broom so his knuckles stood out white, even against his starlight skin. There was no sneer in his face as Harry stared back, but it was not exactly welcoming, either. Something about it made him grin, and it was returned with suspicion.

"Something amuse you, Potter?"

"Yeah," he answered, arching an eyebrow. "Your persistence."

Malfoy hesitated long enough to allow Harry the opportunity to give him the corner of a savage smirk, drop his feet back to the straw of his broom, and kick forward with the force of a bullet. He could hear him give a rather draconian hiss of frustration—not suiting someone of his House, either—and instantly turn and kick after in wordless pursuit with equal force.

So he _could _count on those Seeker instincts. It would have been a far less interesting night if he'd spent it winging circles around Malfoy like a dumbstruck first year, the only challenge being stomaching the hollow threats of his words.

He threw a glance over his shoulder to egg on his pursuer, but found nothing tailing him but gusts of wind. Harry grimaced, confused. Instinctively, he gripped the broom tighter, hanging closer to the center of balance, and shifted, starting a wide, fast turn. The stars gave little light, and what did shine enough to see was often cut by the shadows of the towers. Harry cut through one, gazing backward, and came through to the other side, in the sight of the moon but still doused in a menacing shadow.

Harry banked sharp right and Malfoy lunged down where he had been only an instant before, looking fiercely at him.

"You're being deliberately unpleasant now," Harry couldn't help but taunt.

It brought out another glowing stare of stone-gray eyes, which became the fuel that shot him back across the pitch in challenge. The cold satisfaction of night air whipping by, tousling his uncontrollable dark hair, and running stark and bracing in his lungs only added to the thrill of the chase. And when he made an abrupt dip, swooping down and turning back to have Malfoy overshoot and arch past him, then pulled the broom shaft to his chest and headed for the moon—he thought that an enjoyable night might be salvageable after all.

The Slytherin Seeker let out a growl worthy of a Gryffindor lion and pursued.

Harry led him consistently in circles, dropping back, feinting, toying with every standard maneuver and twisting it to make him overshoot, miss, and tail in widening distances with infuriating ease. He was good at leading the chase and using it to his advantage, as much as it seethed his mind to admit it, made his bones burn green. But manipulation of boundaries and rules was a skill that was taught well and thoroughly in the Dungeons of Hogwarts, and Draco walked them everyday.

It wouldn't do for a Slytherin to chase in blind determination. Harry could keep his distance all day. Lions might fight with eyes clouded with purpose, but Serpents possessed minds cleared by it.

He watched Harry's taunting silhouette turn around the Ravenclaw Tower and resisted the raw urge to chase that made his knuckles white around the broom and instead whirled about, cut altitude and bolted along the grass in the opposite direction.

He skimmed dangerously close to the fence as the colors of gold and green and red and yellow blurred by, changing from one to another in an instant. He turned to look over his shoulder and up into the night sky. It nearly caused him to loose his balance and ram the shaft of his broom into the passing Gryffindor tower and pole-vault into the ground, but he swung away back away and took a deep breath. A new bout of determination flooded through him to the tips of his white fingers and he threw his weight to the side without listening to the ever-rational Slytherin voice in him. It told him he was being stupid. It told him there were much more elegant ways to champion over Harry than risking his neck on a risky and rather Gryffindor maneuver.

But it that voice couldn't be any louder than the image of Harry Potter, arching up to meet him with a face and a smile to dim the sun, greeting him as if he were an old friend—and then snatching it away. A snake in his belly hissed, crying for retaliation.

So he raced barely inches off the ground of the pitch, his elbow running through the grass, lying completely parallel to the dirt. Thunder and blood rushed through his ears, but he was hidden in the shadow of the stadium's towers, and he could see Potter perfectly, drifting high above and still jetting along. For a moment, the figure hesitated, glancing backwards, finding nothing behind him but stars, and slowed. He kept the same course, though, and Draco was running parallel with it, undetected. Within moments, he had matched Harry's speed. And Potter was none the wiser to it.

Draco grinned wildly. He was still pushing all his energy into keeping the broom perfectly balanced and not catching the ground and snapping it in half. With another deep breath, he looked up to the sky, calculated, and rolled back up into the air. He pulled the tip of his broom to the stars and bolted upwards.

Harry couldn't help but look over his shoulder again and curse again. Malfoy had disappeared, it had seemed, and even in a harmless game of cat-and-mouse, he couldn't trust him not to try some slimy tactic. Like a horse chomping on the bit, he slowed, gripping his broom, giving sharp looks all about him.

The green pitch was deserted save for the chalk white lines and shadows of towers. The stands, normally crawling with crowing and singing housemates, were empty and clean and had much fewer eyes. He might have enjoyed the thought more, had he not been scanning the stars and trees for the slightest amount of movement. This was a different kind of being watched. He felt the hidden pair of eyes set on him as he slowed and turned his head out towards the forest again, his feet drifting in the silent air.

Malfoy slammed into him without a moment's warning. He threw his shoulder into Harry's leg with such abrupt, upward force that it nearly completely dislodged him from his broom.

Gravity pawed at him and pulled his right leg clean off, almost the left, which caught the broom in the crook of his knee. Pain swam in both, and the stars and pitch spiraled into a slur of black and green and starlight. His right hand flew off, his left barely scraping the wood of his broom, clutching mostly at cold air as his body lurched towards the ground. A curse jumped from his throat that would have sucked the color out of Malfoy's face if it hadn't always been the color of the moon.

Harry groaned, an angry sound, and threw his pained right leg back around his broomstick, clenching through the pain and effort. And when he heaved and righted himself again, Draco saw the polar opposite of what had greeted him that night and felt those eyes rip through him. It was betrayal.

"Bloody fuck, Malfoy," he growled, leaning forward over the broom to let out a braced breath. "It's a game, for God's sake. If either of us ends up in the hospital wing, we are _both _going to get detention. What is wrong with you?"

Draco had always had a response ready for Potter's words. Always a superior line to strike down whatever could escape his mouth, always an uncaring and distant word. Something that made him comfortable and satisfied, even when eyes greener than the Qudditch Pitch bore into him. This was different.

He opened his mouth and made a noise that would not become a confident word. Harry gave him one last moment of poison expression, and turned away.

Draco struggled for a response. "You were the one to start it in the first place!" he snapped, turned sour by Potter's sourness. "I should be the one to ask you that. Did your unbred Mudblood mother drop you one too many times?"

Harry whirled and faced him. Fury made him glow in the moonlight; the light reflected off his glasses paling next to that in his eyes. "You have no _right_ to talk about her, and I'll make sure you understand that, Malfoy, even if we both have detention until Christmas. So sod off, why don't you?"

"I can talk about any one I please. It's a basic right, Potter," he slung back.

"Always the elegant one, aren't you, bringing up mothers as soon as you open your mouth. Maybe I should just let you, then. You must not have anything else to say." The terrible expression slung back into a grimace. "Pity."

It burned every fuse Draco possessed to see that condescending look. Every pureblooded inch of him turned furious and jagged. "You're just as impolite, _Potter_," he forced out, running his voice into poisonous honey. "Be damned if you would have a civil conversation with anyone not bending down and kissing the bottom of your robes at every turn."

Harry fought the slight with silence and simply did not move. His hands remained gripped tight, knuckles white, and neck tense, eyes trained on him. He would not feed this serpent.

But he could charm it with a little of its own language.

"You're jealous," he said. "And it's pathetic."

"You wish," Draco shot back.

"I _know_," Harry corrected.

The Slytherin faltered a moment, and his broom dipped low, but he fiercely corrected it and set his jaw. "Go back to your Tower of worshippers, _Saint_ Potter. I'm not going to bow before you just because you've got a nasty little scar on your face."

The corner of his mouth turned upwards all the while. Draco couldn't imagine what was so amusing about the situation, how he could grin in the middle of their animosity. But there it was, a genuine look of laughter slung across his face. It made something in him, constantly sent into frothing rage by jealousy, taunted by defeat, and enraged by lack of attention, settle and quiet for a moment when Potter smiled at him, and it was more laughter than mockery. "And I'm not going to turn and run just because you've got a nasty mouth, _Lord_ Malfoy. This is as much my pitch as yours. So don't think you're gonna get it all to yourself."

With that, Harry Potter turned the straw towards him, and whipped back across the night air, free and unbridled—and ignoring him again.


	2. Storm Clouds and Bare Feet

Part II – Storm Clouds and Bare Feet

The forecast in the morning of sunny, clear skies for the remainder of the day turned out to be as false as any prediction dribbled off Trelawney's lips.

Harry settled his chin in his hand and watched the stain glass windows in the Astronomy Tower darken as a wash of rain fell. Occasionally, he'd drift back to catch a few misty words, attempt to store away some random facts, realize how little fact there was to be had, and turn his chin back to the window.

The rain didn't quit. It poured down, cold and without mercy, even as Harry once again heard Trelawney gasp and predict a terrifying account of death, though he was too far out of this place to tell if it was his own once again. It coursed down the Tower's dark stones, made curtains on the white and blood red and misty gray window designs. It followed the students as they reached the bottom of the stairwell and scattered into the surrounding corridors. It followed close and relentless—it was rather Malfoy-ish cloud, the more he thought about it and grimaced at the flinty sky.

"They said it should let up soon," Ron was commenting as Harry turned back, slinging his books under his arm. "I hope it'll least last until tomorrow. It'd give us more of an advantage over Slytherin, seeing as we'll have another chance to practice before the game and they won't after today."

Hermione soon caught them at the atrium where three corridors met. Immediately, her eyes snapped to Harry and he resisted a grimace. It was the same expression he'd received the moment he'd attempted to glean something from her parchment that morning, and from the particular twitch of her eyebrow, he suspected she had an idea as to why he hadn't finished his own scroll and earned himself extra work from Flitwick. But she didn't say another word of it, disapprove as she did, and instead joined into Ron's fervent stratagem, just as eager to see Slytherin House trampled in the upcoming match.

They began the trek back to the Gryffindor Tower, as lunch and the menace of more storm clouds fast approached.

Harry watched the first crack of lightning break, white hot and delicate, over the Black Lake as he chewed a mouthful of roast beef, and then tilted his head to watch a magical echo split the ceiling over the Great Hall. The illusion of clouds were considerably more enjoyable than the real thing, glowing violet and black, artistic and nothing else. He turned around and watched every Quidditch player's head lift and droop when thunder rolled over the school. Those at the Slytherin table choose to sneer, instead, and one in particular caught his eye and grimaced with extra dislike.

He turned around, smiling at the intense, smoky color Malfoy's eyes had been, looking rather rubbed by situation.

"Maybe the rain isn't so bad after all," he muttered, reaching forward for a roll.

"Huh?" Ron lifted his head across the table. His mouth was filled with a slice of pumpkin pie and rimmed with bits of cream. Hermione winced at the sight, sitting beside Harry.

"Please, Ron, eat that before you decorate us with it."

Harry decided to continue, giving Ron time to comply with her wish, elaborating, "The Slytherins need this last practice together to coordinate their team before our match, rain or no rain. Ever since Flint finished school, they've been swinging from Captain to Captain, and as far as I can tell, they haven't been able to decently work on strategies or team coordination because of it."

"It's only their fault, bickering as they do whenever a position of power makes itself available—or they _force_ it available, anyway," Hermione added. "But I don't think it'll make any difference, Harry. Their only strategy is deceit and force. You know what they'll do as soon as you get to the Pitch. They'll try to harass you off your broom and break Ron's arm, or Malfoy'll try to hex you. It's not a complicated thing to play dirty."

"Yeah, speaking of the devil," said Ron when the mouthful finally landed in his stomach and he'd licked off the cream, "isn't he supposed to be Captain this year?"

"Probably," Harry said. He looked down at his plate of food, cocking an eyebrow. "I suppose I never really thought about it. He's got almost as much experience as I do, so I'd think it'd be their first choice."

"His father bullied his way into the position." Ron was so sure of it, he didn't even need to look up as he reached for his cup. "You know that, Harry."

"No, I don't."

"That's how he got _on_ the team. His father's bloody _contribution_. What's to stop him from using that influence again?"

"Talent?"

The newly appointed Gryffindor Keeper challenged Harry's answer with a fervor in his eye of which he was sure only Malfoy had been on the receiving end. "I don't think so," he said firmly. "Even if he had it, would it make him _stop_ manipulating people?"

It was a good point, but Harry had a gut instinct that told him otherwise. He could not see Malfoy's confident and disdainful face curling into an expression of hesitance and pleading. What he could see was a furious desire to get it, pulling back the corners of his mouth into a grimace of determination. And he _had_ seen it, watching him tautly in his emerald green robes as he lead the Gryffindor team out to the center for the coin toss and Draco stood and glared behind Flint's replacement. As a Seeker only—as less. Malfoy would earn it himself, because _Harry_ had.

And it wasn't to say he was a poor player, either. Just a Slytherin with atrocious ethics, disproportionate investments of self-importance, and his family's intolerance.

"Pride," Harry answered finally. He picked up the knife beside his plate and asked Dean to pass the plate of butter without paying much attention to Ron's vexed, _thinking_-_of_-_Malfoy_-_is_-_excruciating_ expression or Hermione's thoughtful hum.

* * *

Draco Malfoy was a whirlwind that no Slytherin dared to approach when he stomped through the dungeons in sopping green Quidditch robes. The storm clouds had prevailed on the Pitch, throwing most of the unseasoned players about like paper kites, and greatly harassing those who could manage a broom. His jade green goggles were shoved up onto his forehead, worsening the creases of frustration there, and threw his wet, white-blonde hair into rather unbecoming angles. His father's sneer pulled at his face and he indulged it, adding his own scowl to it as he stormed past the Common Room and up the stairs.

His carefully maintained superiority could not always gloss over his emotions. And the thought of even the slightest possibility of a chance of losing to Potter was more than enough to rend any higher breeding asunder. In his rather understandable frustration, he had forgotten the Drying Spell and left a long trail of silvery water on the floor as he moved.

The rains battered and howled outside relentlessly. It sounded more like the terrible laughter of some Gryffindor cloud, come to ruin the Slytherin chances in the upcoming Snake and Lion match. Ignoring the fact that rain had drown out both the Slytherin and Gryffindor practices in his hurry to brood, he threw open the door to his dormitory like a furious burst of wind. It slammed against the wall and would have swung back to strike him in anger if he had not been already to the side of his bed, throwing his broom onto his bed and ripping the goggles from his head.

His eyes fixated on the window, staring out into the raging storm, for an indeterminable amount of time before the sensation of cold, wet robes clinging all over his body brought him out of the clutch of his emotions, which had been tumbling through his brain, too turbulent for a structure.

He blinked rapidly as if he were coming out of a daze. And then he realized just how unbecoming he had been, and promptly dried his clothes and smoothed down his hair.

Only Pansy dared to speak to him when he finally reemerged from the dormitory to go fetch something to soothe his stomach and his mind. Anyone else would have received a rather unwelcome expression and clipped reply. But she was much more refined than most of his Housemates—and he'd known her before he'd really even known himself.

So he didn't sneer at her. But he couldn't help but retain the grimace.

"Weather has never agreed with man when it doesn't feel like it, Draco," she reminded him in such a calm, wise tone he might have accused her of imitating his mother purposely. She was lying on the couch, with a book in her lap. "Even wizards can't touch the wind. Don't fall from your broom chasing a Snitch that's already been caught."

He hesitated, and almost considered telling her of the resemblance. "Quite the pearls of advice, Pansy. Did you steal them from that book just to tell to me?"

She smirked and looked more herself, crinkling up her nose in her smile. "No," she giggled. "But it doesn't matter where I got it, does it? The wisdom remains." Draco was sure some of that smirk had come from many years of extended family status with the Parkinsons and having only one playmate his age, but the scrunched nose was her own.

"Would you like something from the kitchens?" he asked, indicating the pearl of advice with a lift of his eyebrow and a smirk.

"Of course not," she answered, lifting the book and her nose. She was trying to be as poised as her mother, as regal and reserved, but her short black bob took a little away from that growing illusion. One day she'd be there, but it was not today. "It's far too late for a lady to be eating."

He smiled at her and bid her goodnight, since ladies were best to keep to their beauty sleep early, and slunk out of the Dungeons.

His good mood, though, seemed to slip and give way to the hostility that lay beneath, still provoked by the flinty sky and the laughter of lightning. The house elf before him wrung his small hands, lit by the red-orange flame cradled in the Hand of Glory but unable to see that light, and denied him. The very idea inflamed him so he barely caught the reasoning for such denial through the flare of his emotions.

"Do you not have _food_ in the kitchens?" Draco demanded.

"Yes, young master, but—"

"Then what is the problem?"

"Rules forbid us to simply hand over food to students at such hours of the night," the elf explained, looking rather anxious to disappear underneath his sharp, gray gaze and pretend that he was not there at all. Which was the appropriate sentiment, he knew, but such cowardice served only to frustrate him.

Ah, the rules. The rules were not a beast, staring him down, with teeth and jaws that would instantly take its punishment—it was not even the watchful eye of a professor with the ability to take his Captain's badge from him. Right now it was merely a word in the mouth of a servant, and did not frighten him. A true Malfoy did not flee from words.

"I _said_, I'd like something to eat." He wrapped the influence of his voice in silk, as to make it easier for the elf to stomach. The large, dull eyes blinked up at him quietly, then bowed before him and asked if he had a preference.

"Something sweet," he answered, remembering that it was better not to show the smile of victory a few minutes after it had already spread across his face.

When a small bowl of toffee was presented to him in the quivering hands of an elf, he glanced up at the small, scrubbed windows and saw clear fields of stars overhead.

He grimaced, letting frustration rise up, but instead found himself more eager to get to the Pitch than fume about the damned weather. Nearly forgetting himself, he turned back around to take the ruby-red toffees and left the kitchens without another word.

* * *

The flinty clouds that had plagued all of Hogwarts that day seemed to lose interest and wander away exactly at the hour all the students had been ushered to bed and the grounds grew quiet and dark. Harry felt it in his bones the moment it quit as starkly as if he'd been standing in the rain the moment it stopped falling.

It was late. He was lounging on his bed, trying to pick through a rather indecipherable Charms book detailing the physical repercussions of Levitation Charms on creatures weighing more than three hundred pounds for his extra work, while everyone else snored happily. The empty white light of his _Lumos_ incantation cast shadows across the sleeping faces of his fellow Gryffindors. Ron squinted in his sleep and rolled over.

Harry glanced up over his glowing wand and out the window, lying on his stomach and arching his back uncomfortably to so do. The windows were wet, but it wasn't raining.

He threw himself off his bed, into warmer clothes, and underneath his cloak as quietly and as fast as was humanly possible. It would have been completely silent had he not nearly tripped over his own trainers in his hurry to grab his Firebolt. But otherwise, not even Ms. Norris would have heard him as he made his way out to the pitch.

He didn't have to wait to travel as far as the pitch cramped around his broomstick to find out he wasn't alone in his illicit actions. Looking through the iridescent fabric, he could see the dark figure slink out into the corridor in front of him from the Dungeon corridor and dart ahead of him, clutching a polished broom and a twisted old Hand of Glory. A grin split Harry's face before he even registered it and he found himself unable to resist lifting his Firebolt, pressing it painfully into his ribs, and hurrying forward in stalking silence. There was only one person it could be.

Draco Malfoy did not give signal that he knew he was no longer alone in the corridor, let alone that an invisible Harry Potter was strolling beside him, observing him through a grin.

And without a dim-witted crony flanking either side to offset his true image and just the right influence of the moon, he seemed something completely different, at least from what Harry could see. In the torchlight of the Dungeons, he was a pale and depraved reflection of his father, a caricature of the Malfoy lineage, and beneath the stare of sunlight above the Pitch, he was a white and bothersome crow. Without Crabbe and Goyle standing as brainless columns of allegiance at his sides, he seemed smaller, of course, but in a way that made Harry tilt his head thoughtfully. He looked deflated, somehow free of the insufferable air of loathing superiority that repelled any reasonable being in a five-foot radius. Of course, he was still visibly thick with prejudice and proud in his step, but his eyes were not loaded with spears of hateful defense as they watched the Pitch come around the bend. They looked bright and young. Harry was pretty sure it was not a very Malfoy thing to look so enthused about a game.

His pale hands, neck, and face stood out against his dark clothing like warm ice and his hair, normally slicked back or combed to pompous perfection, was loose and unrestrained, falling over his forehead freely. It was a warm cream color, and Harry would have snickered at the image of Malfoy, doused in whipped cream, if it wouldn't have alerted Draco to his presence, walking in matching strides.

With ashen eyes fixated on the approaching Pitch, Harry found himself disagreeing even more strongly than ever with Ron's accusation in the Great Hall. In Draco he saw an authentic hunger to fly, not a boy who'd been bullied into the sport by the influence of his father. Not someone who could stomach being bought into something he truly wanted. Not someone who would risk his neck, risk his chances for shining glory and victory come game day to practice in the dead of night, when he could be sleeping soundly in his bed.

Or maybe he was the same loathsome git, and he was simply a very bored and very capable night owl. But Harry wouldn't have liked to be proven wrong.

He smiled as he looked down and saw Malfoy's bare feet. It looked as if sharing the Pitch again might not be so bad after all. He decided to walk the rest of the way with Malfoy, not yet revealing he was there.


	3. Apologies and Jokes

Part III – Apologies and Jokes

Harry had not yet decided to make his presence known, though he was sure there was some sliver of suspicion in Malfoy when he lifted his head and fixed his stare just inches away from his true position.

The Slytherin hesitated for a moment, blanching as if he'd seen a ghost. He stepped forward and sliced a hand through the empty air to test it for supernatural entities. Harry sidestepped it, biting down hard on his lip to avoid laughing. Malfoy quickly decided to move on and plaster on a calm face, pretend he was utterly fearless, even though he was completely alone on the Pitch. Well, as far as he knew.

Harry watched him beneath the shimmering sheen of his father's Invisibility Cloak, still wrapped uncomfortably around his own broomstick. As impatient as the smell of the Pitch and cold glow of the stars made him, he was going to wait before revealing his presence. Malfoy betrayed his secret sense of terror again, glancing over his shoulder at an invisible Harry, before slinging a leg over his Nimbus and kicking off with the speed of an icy wind. And accelerated, arching away from the ground, with decided deliberation. Underneath the watch of the moon, his figure grew small and distant, traveling out over the school grounds.

Harry smirked and slid off the cloak. With it shrunken and slipped into his back pocket, he walked out into the center of the Pitch with his Firebolt. He stopped near where Malfoy had kicked off, and snorted when he noticed he'd dug deep enough to rip the grass from the ground in his bare toes. A fearless menace? He suddenly didn't think so, watching Malfoy's shape rising higher with a smirk.

Riding the wind with Malfoy was at least more enjoyable company than dueling for his life with Voldemort, who went out of his way to torture and mangle him. Malfoy seemed so much less of a threat after staring into the red eyes of hate. In fact, it was almost enjoyable to look into those eyes of gray rather than Voldemort's serpentine stare.

He spring-loaded his legs, clenching his broomstick, and kicked off hard.

Harry caught up with him, high over the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Draco had come to a hovering stop, watching the menacing dark shape of the woods sprawl out before him, creeping up into the peaks and crags of the misty foothills surrounding Hogwarts. His bare feet hung from his broomstick and swung in the wind.

"Hey," said Harry.

Malfoy startled and jumped, if such a motion were possible on a broom in midair, and looked at him with fright before he recognized him. Then it shifted, but never completely settled. "What do you want Potter?" he threw at him, turning his broom so that his back was no longer to the Gryffindor. "Because if it's not to apologize to me, then I suggest you reconsider your decision to come out here."

Harry blinked, then indulged in a smirk. "Well, I didn't know you still wanted that apology so bad. If you can't get _over_ it, then maybe I should go ahead and pity you with one, huh?"

"That's not what I meant, and I don't have the time nor energy necessary to explain it to you," he growled, neatly turning his broom around and motoring away with an unhappy grimace. "I bid you goodnight and sweet dreams, then, _Potter_."

Harry could not believe what he was seeing, but moved past the shock to lean forward on his broom, urging it forward to match Malfoy's speed.

"Oh, come off it, you blubbering git," Harry told him as they fell into parallel paths. Malfoy looked put out and swung away, putting more distance between them but not yet altering course. "Don't act so immature—I treated you the way you treated me, Malfoy. Why are you crying over it? I won't apologize to you until you apologize to me for cursing out my mother."

"Shall we actually discuss whom owes whom the apologies, Potter? Can you honestly tell me it will not be a waste of my breath to do so?"

Flinty gray eyes met his, as unpleasant as a looming storm cloud. But his voice had slipped into its regular rhythm of silk and cadence of pride and superiority. It made him appear much more confidant, puffing out his feathers—but Harry thought it was more a defense than it was an honest emotion. A rattlesnake, afraid of being stepped on, making desperate noise to avoid the pain.

Harry grinned to himself.

Draco scowled when he did, translating it differently. "I thought as much," he muttered, and turned his broom as to take a different route.

"Hey, come on, Malfoy, you were the one who wanted to talk. Don't be insufferable—"

"No, actually," he corrected, speaking fluidly and coldly, "it was _you_ who approached _me_. And I don't appreciate the company, thank you. I came to clear my mind, not poison it with your bloody pride. So again, I bid you goodnight, Potter." And he shot back towards the Pitch, looking determined not to be followed.

But Harry knew better than to bend and break at Draco's huffing and puffing—he was not some frail house made of straw and Malfoy was far from a grown wolf. So he turned and followed.

Draco knew he would and bent low over his broom, driving his sincerity home with a burst of speed sending him arching past the Slytherin Tower.

Something in Harry pawed and lurched, thrilled by the very thought of speed and competition, urging him to kick forward and pursue the target at fevered pitch. It pleaded with him and thrummed in the middle of his chest. It told him he was more than capable of catching Malfoy in an all-out sprint, and he was, but Harry nudged the instinct away and try another method. Chasing Malfoy like some petulant blond Snitch was not what he'd come out here to do.

If he could just offer other people the _bloody_ civilization he demanded of them, he wouldn't ruin everything! Harry snorted to himself, knowing how likely that was, dropped low, and felt his Firebolt thrum with joy as he urged it forward, and fast.

Malfoy heard little more to prepare him than a few distant squawks of the Norwegian Bull Eagles that had recently taken up nest on the edge of the Forbidden Forest—much to Hagrid's delight, and thus to Draco's great distaste. The howl of the wind over his ears, throwing his hair into disarray with speed and cold, blocked out all signs that might have warned him of Harry's next move. He did not have to glance back to notice the absence of his irritant tailing him, but did not slow to look for him.

Rather, he did not have the time, for Harry Potter swung up, after cutting through a loose panel of fabric in the ring around the Pitch, and hovered directly in Draco's path, causing him to bank hard to put on the brakes.

"Don't be deliberately unpleasant, now," he said with a smile.

Malfoy pinned him with a waspy expression, hoping to physically repel him simply with the displeasure in his eyes. Unfortunately, Potter didn't seem to be as sensitive to such subtle displays, or indifferent to them. Both prospects made the serpent coiled unhappily in him hiss.

"I believe I've already spoken to you about this, Potter. This conversation is nothing more than a waste of both our breath, though more of mine than yours," Draco told him, suddenly feeling exhausted by his rage. "And there's somewhere better I could be than here with such company. So _sod_ _off._"

Harry sighed. "Why do you have to fight just for the sake of a fight, Malfoy? And what if I said that I didn't care if it was a waste of your precious 'pureblood' breath?"

The Slytherin practically bristled in response, raising spines of venom no one could see but he'd be damned if anyone wouldn't sense it. "Then I'd realize you're absolutely mad for trying so hard to talk with me if you bloody well loathe it," he snapped. The moonlight seeped into the crevices of his sneer as he hovered above the Pitch. "And I don't fight for the sake of a fight—nor for the sake of a cheap thrill, _Potter_."

"This isn't a cheap thrill, Malfoy," Harry corrected him, motoring to once again fly beside the agitated serpent. "It takes much more tolerance stomaching your tantrums than it seems. I must compliment your mother for having the patience of a saint in raising you."

He sent Malfoy a smile like a knife and Malfoy hesitated to battle it back with a sneer, a finely placed smear of prejudice, and slash of the tongue. He saw it again, that expression that had greeted him sincerely as Harry rose in the starlight, not yet darkening his eyes at seeing him and throwing up a barrier of Gryffindor pride built for six years. And he didn't react in fear of chasing it off in favor of the usual treatment again.

Harry remained grinning, sitting comfortably on his broom as they both slowed to a casual drift, and added, "I suggest she begin a course on it—she'd probably have half the school learning how to deal with your grouchiness. Maintaining Your Malfoy."

It was his first instinct—his loudest instinct—to hiss and sneer and determinedly turn his nose up at Potter's crude attempt at humor, but something terrible betrayed him and he smiled.

And as soon as he realized the horrible thing he'd done, he turned his head, trying to pull it off his face before Harry caught sight of it. But, judging by the way his broomstick swooned and he was staring at him out of the corner of his eye, it was useless. Color ran to his face and embarrassment filled out into his fingertips. Without bothering to issue a perfunctory insult or even look at the Gryffindor, Draco turned his broom and attempted to bullet off. He would land, grab his Hand of Glory, stomp back to the Dungeons and pretend he never honestly laughed at a joke from Harry Potter's mouth.

Yes, that seemed least painful avenue of them all.

It must not have seemed that way to Harry, who quickly squashed his astonishment enough to take control of his swooning broom and dart into Malfoy's path. In fact, he seemed intent on taking an opposite path, cutting him off from any avenue of escape at all.

Draco nearly collided with Harry, and looked up at him, paler than the moon except for the flush of red in his cheeks. He wasn't glaring—he was terrified, and that led to a defensive scowl.

"Get out of my way!" he barked.

"Malfoy—"

"Shut up!"

He didn't even bother with the sneering façade of poise now, not while his stomach was bubbling and his face and neck boiling. Rather than seeing Harry floating in front of him, he saw the dreadful morning that awaited him—a morning filled with degrading and painfully undeniable accounts of Draco's weaknesses swarming in the Gryffindor common room. He saw Harry, not on a broom watching him with care, but with a vicious smile, recounting every word with a treacherous prejudice to his precious worshippers. And then he would laugh, bruising the few good memories of that weeknight and ripping his pride down to the bone and into something even more painful.

The fear swelled when he realized there was not much he could do about it—if Harry was going to tell everyone, there was little stopping him. But that didn't mean he had to remain here and endure more. Putting on his worse face, he threw his shoulder into Potter and shoved past him.

"Malfoy!" Harry gasped after him. The tone of his voice was utterly confusing—he sounded offended and entitled at the physical shove, of course, but there was also a rustle of disappointment. "Hey, come back! Come on, I'll even apologize to you. I just—"

"Fuck you!" Draco answered him. He was already steadying his feet to land when Harry recovered from the shock of hearing him swear and shot after.

He hit the ground still moving, running with the remaining momentum, and dismounted. Harry's voice called out after him again but ended in a frustrated growl before it grew too loud and drew unwanted attention. Draco forced himself not to throw a glance backward and snatched up his Hand of Glory as he stalked off the Pitch. Left the deeply soothing smell of rain-washed grass and high, cold air running through his lungs. As much as he hated giving up the peace of mind flying gave him, he hated Potter more.

He hated him. Hated the fact he had made him laugh, hated his friendly greetings, hated the fact he hadn't landed yet and chased after on hovering broomstick.

"Malfoy!"

"Keep it down, will you? Or are you hoping Filch will hear you bellowing all the way across the grounds?"

Harry finally caught up with the Slytherin, his own bare feet hovering an inch over the grass as he flew beside him. His hands were clenched tight around the broom, knuckles white, lips curled back in an unhappy expression. He shook his head at him. "You know," he began, "for a minute, I thought you might not be an absolute grimy git of a human being."

"I'll never be a simpering Gryffindor, if that's what you mean, Potter," he answered. "So you might as well give up and go back to your worshippers. They'll be missing you about now, won't they?" he asked poisonously, still determinedly staring ahead with eyes of misty fire. He refused to look at those eyes greener than the Pitch, flickering with judgment and distaste.

Harry chose to ignore the latter comment, though his knuckles were still hot white. "I _meant_ you can be decent when you want to. But you never want to, I guess."

Draco grimaced, pushing everything away but his rage. He finally did look at Potter, but only to send him a knife of loathing—_something_ to make him leave him alone. "If it meant suffering your presence for so long, who would?"

"You must be," he continued, unaffected by the look, but sounding more bitter than he had. Draco willed to feel nothing but rage. "It's either that, or all of those who can stand to be around you must be brainwashed by your father or something. I knew he bought you onto the team, but I didn't think he had to buy your friends."

Draco ground to a halt and whirled on the Gryffindor Seeker. "I'm sick of this. Piss off," he growled.

Green eyes flared back. "What's wrong with _you_? All I wanted—"

"Do you need the money, Potter? Is that why you won't leave me the hell alone? Or do you honestly want to be my friend?"

That finally silenced the ever persistent curse that was Harry Potter that night, hovering on his polished little Firebolt, floating on a cushion of his own inflated hero complex, focusing his emerald green eyes on Draco through his spectacles, looking dumbstruck and utterly obnoxious for being so innocent. Was that actual hurt? His face flickered and momentarily crumbled, as if the scar on his head had split open. His mouth shifted into something Draco couldn't read, and for a moment he felt a pang of regret.

"No," he said finally, "I was just wondering."

Draco didn't have the time to make another affront before Harry tore his indecipherable gaze away, his lighting bolt showing blistering red beneath his bangs, and left him, still hovering proudly on his broom.


	4. A Bite of Panic

**Part IV – A Bite of Panic**

Tick. Tock. Ron turned a page. Someone cracked a yawn. An ember turned and rolled in the fireplace. Tick. Tock. Hermione scribbled a note on her parchment. Tick. Tock.

Harry let out another sigh as punctually as a clock as he watched the light and shadow from the fire twist and move on the ceiling. They plunged and whirled, a herd of wild horses tossing their manes and kicking wildly, then burst into thousands of doves which scattered into every corner of the room. Eventually the playful shades settled into a warm orange glow and slept. Harry grimaced. Without something to watch, he knew he was going to drift into memories, and between the violent green flash and the angry gray stare, he didn't feel like reminiscing much.

He was lying on the couch, now watching the empty ceiling. Ron was paging through his History of Magic book, but staring at the wall with drooping lids as he did so. Two towers of books framed Hermione on the floor. When she would finish combing one for information and scribing it onto her parchment, she would put it on the growing Finished pile, and take another from the shrinking Unread pile.

Judging from the gothic text and rather unintelligible Nordic on the cover, Hermione was probably brushing up on more information on Hagrid's newest animal addition—his prize Norwegian Bull Eagles. They were a breeding pair on loan from the Glasgow Magical Creatures Zoological Society, intended to test the Forbidden Forest as a location for possible reintroduction. And, in her usual fashion, she was accumulating information for an essay or something. Not that Hagrid had actually _assigned_ an essay, though.

Harry found himself staring through Hermione like she was a diluted illusion, hiding a memory that waited patiently and pounced upon him.

"He didn't," the Boy-Who-Lived mumbled to himself a moment later. "Right?"

"Didn't what?"

Harry started, lifting his head from the deep indent it'd created in the pillow, and looked at Hermione, a great dusty tome settled on her lap. "Huh?" he grunted.

"Didn't what?" she repeated.

"What?"

Hermione furrowed her brow. "Were you talking to me?"

And here it was that Ron thought it would be totally appropriate to add another, "What?" as he tore his mind out of the soggy grip of boredom. Hermione shot him a precursory, annoyed glance that made Ron turn red with frustration, asking again, "_What_?"

"I was talking to Harry," she amended. "Now, what were you saying?"

Harry half-smiled in amusement, watching Ron's petulant expression when he turned to him in referral, mouthing the words, "What did I do now?" He shook his head, trying not to laugh, before turning to Hermione. "Sorry. I wasn't talking to you."

"But you said something," she replied. She closed her book with a great cough of dust. "You were staring straight at me and said something. You weren't talking to me?"

Harry felt something like a prick of shame rise up, a tiny snakebite in his chest that caused him to flush a bit. He hadn't meant to speak out loud at all, let alone include anyone in the discussion. "I mean," he said, grinning nervously, "I wasn't talking to anyone. You know, just mumbling to myself."

Hermione's gaze turned on him at a suspicious angle, but she didn't pursue it. Ron, however, just observed the two, noted the conversation, and then turned back to his book, with the hazy intent of reading it before he fell asleep beside the fire. He seemed impervious to any sort of subtlety drifting in the air, and gave no mind. Harry was thankful for that, but could not shake the watchful edge of Hermione's stare no matter how long he gazed up at the ceiling, or tried to bury his mind in the warm, yellow flames.

It was not long before he felt the pull of the moon trying to tug him back to the Pitch, and found himself staring blankly out the window at its pale, empty face. He wanted the cold wind biting at his face, the wet grass soaking his trainers, and the willing comrade of his broomstick. Something to eclipse the foul mood he'd been forced to bear all day long.

Eventually, Ron's snores became too much of a distraction for Hermione to bear, and she stood up, looking curiously at him, trying to devise a way to drag him to bed. Harry helped her pluck him out of his chair, and stand him up. When he remained doggedly unconscious, Harry sighed and cast a _Mobilicorpus_.

Bidding Hermione goodnight with one hand, and tugging Ron along with his wand in the other, Harry trudged up the stairs in the dormitory. The rest had long ago retired and related to each other in their sleep through a rhythmic pattern of snoring. Seamus would breath in with a roaring snort, Neville would whistle out a breath between his teeth, and every so often Dean would add a sleepy murmur. After he'd put Ron in his bed, noticing how quick he was to join into the growing cacophony, Harry lowered his gaze to the floor and felt a low sigh rushing through him. His eyes crept away and led him to the window beside his bed.

The moonlight taunted him. It knew that he stood there, watching the darkened landscape through the crosshatched iron of his window, and silently kept the secret. It could not betray anything to anyone. It would not tell Hermione if he chose to turn and walk out of his dormitory beneath his cloak, broomstick in hand. It would not breathe a word if he made his way out to the pitch, if only to quench his need for flight.

And maybe a little curiosity.

* * *

Draco didn't know exactly why he found himself skimming above the Forbidden Forest in the dead quiet of night, but wasted no further effort in trying to wrestle out an answer. He could feel something sour and vile waiting in the pit of his stomach, wanting and needing release, but an entire day of wallowing in such a gross emotion had taken its toll.

He'd found himself snapping at Pansy when he would have graced her with a flirtatious smirk. He would drift off into memory and awake to the sounds of his Potions assignments shattering with an uncontrollable crack of emotional magic. None of his usual flatterers dared come his way, and all wary Slytherins had seemed to creep to their own crevices for the night, careful to avoid him. A grimace wrought across his face, he found little relief even in flight tonight. The cold wind blew through his bare toes, knocking his feet gently together as he stopped to hover and admire the landscape beneath the moon.

He could appreciate the cold night for its consistency, at least. And the bitter wind would keep him awake and away from memories. It could have turned out to be a quite productive evening, but his luck fell short. Because as soon as he had found himself fed up with the silence of the forest and ready for the silence of sleep instead, and turned his broom toward the castle, a certain silhouette rose against the moon as it crawled over the mountain range. A familiar pain registered in the pit of his stomach and he knew instantly who it must be.

He watched the figure cautiously for a moment, gauging its actions, but, as luck would have it, it motored closer still. Draco hesitated. Wishing, hoping, pleading with some higher power that it might not be Potter—it might be some like-minded Slytherin, or at least some blushing Hufflepuff who would squeak and turn frightened tail upon recognizing his smallest detail.

But it was Potter.

So, without a fool's moment of hesitation, he bent over his broom and bulleted over the forest. He was determined to not allow that intolerable mixture of egotistical hero complex and bull-headed Gryffindor ideals taint his night. It was bad enough, having to remember the sharp angle of Potter's gaze, lodged between that of Pansy's startled look and Crabbe and Goyle's markedly glazed stares. The entire day had sucked and the Gods were still not content with his malcontent, it seemed.

He arched over the wooded hills and for a moment, seized against the light of the moon, caught the attention of the other delinquent in the night sky and made him turn his head.

Harry had not honestly believed he would see Malfoy darting over the pitch as he had on the previous nights. There had been no sullen shadow slinking out of the dungeons as he rounded the corridor, there had been no shriveled hand of glory sitting in the grass beside a pair of sneakers, and there had definitely been no indication on that flushing, furious face that Harry should expect him back for another fly. A certain part of Harry was sincerely relieved, sat back, gloated with the glory of privacy and tranquility for once, and enjoyed it. But the buzz in his head that called him to his broomstick in the first place moved unsatisfied back and forth within him. He mimicked the motion he felt between his feet and chest, guiding the broomstick erratically but fluidly back and forth, taking no set course.

And then he saw he was indeed not alone and the itch in his feet shot cleanly up into his throat, throwing his level-headed part to the ground and filling him with the undeniable urge to bank and follow. His knuckles turned white around the shaft, he licked his lips, and his better judgment, which wanted nothing more than to coast and relax, grimaced and was pushed to the wayside. Harry could not believe that he was turning toward the silhouette of Draco Malfoy against the moon and feeling a whirl of joy send him bulleting after, but he did not care to wonder why.

He loved to fly. And Malfoy was a target. He wasn't following because he wanted to wring revenge or even an apology from him or because he solely wanted to—this was a game. And games were enjoyable.

So he followed.

* * *

Draco kept his speed until he had seen multiple trails of mountains and stony ridges pass beneath him, blanketed in a thick and devilish forest, and only threw his ankles forward to slow when he saw a glassy black lake beneath him break the foliage. Feeling no more certain haste after leaving Potter back on the grounds, he cut speed, bent forward, and began to glide down toward the surface of the water. A soft cry cut the night air and he heard the flutter of wings in the density below him, but did not pay attention. The obsidian of the lake's surface drew him in and he opened his bare toes as he drifted gently into the valley.

It was a smaller, and considerably less malicious-seeming body of water than the Black Lake of Hogwarts. The cool of the moonlight rolled down from the top of the valley into the pool of water, turning the black surface into a glittering back and white painting. A standing army of trees lined the shallow and rocky banks. Draco turned his head back and forth, hearing no further sounds, not even the ambient hum of the night. It was a completely silent haven.

Draco felt a thrill go cleanly through him. And not just the slippery joy of carrying off a plot successfully, not just the instantaneous and guttural enjoyment of getting in a sharp insult or witticism, but a feeling of joy out of being, existing, and realizing that though the still air in his lungs.

He steadied his broom once he'd come to hover over the surface, stuck his feet forward, toes wagging, and drifted along the water, letting the icy black liquid splash on his feet. The softest smile of happiness came across his face. His entire body filled with a gentle fulfillment he only experienced while drifting off into sleep. He even tilted his head and laughed. White diamonds danced across the oil black surface, moonlight glancing and running with him.

The calm of night temporarily cooled that Malfoy temper and smoothed the severe look on his face, leaving nothing but a still and contented smile.

For once in his life, he wasn't prisoner to emotion. Anger did not dye his vision, jealousy did not coil and hiss in his belly, and fear did not throw his heart into his throat. He liked it. He must come out here more often, he told himself with a smile, lifting his magic, singing silently, to raise him out of the water to turn and make another peaceful crossing.

He stopped dead when he turned and saw Potter hovering across from him, toes dipping in the water. The gentle smile on his face evaporated and a blank, startled look came over him.

"Harry," he hiccuped out. In his surprise, he only noticed his strangled voice and not what he had uttered.

The Gryffindor did not flinch in return, nor make any overwhelming respond to either the sharp whirl to face him, the gasp of Malfoy's voice, or the disappearing traces of joy on his moonlight face. Eyes glazed, as if he'd been watching silently for a while, he only remained there, and let a corner of his mouth turn upward for a moment. Draco felt an agonizing string grow taut and nearly splinter in his chest, waiting, terrified by what he may have revealed to the Boy-Who-Lived and how viciously he would turn it against him.

But he smiled and said, "I'm sorry, Draco. Whatever I did to offend you, I apologize. Now, can we play a game of Catch the Snitch? I've been dying to get out here and actually have some fun, not argue with you all night." He even extracted a tiny golden sphere from his pocket and pinched between his fingertips toward Malfoy. Paper-thin white-gold wings unfolded and buzzed expectantly in Harry's palm.

Draco did not think about his answer, but only tightened his grip around the broomstick, shedding all his peaceful energy and adopting his familiar barbs. He could not stand the sight of those damned green eyes looking at him, especially with that contemptible warm expression and that ridiculous, welcoming smile. It was wrong. And the sound of his own name, falling off Potter's precious little lips, was wrong.

It couldn't be genuine apology; it had to be a Gryffindor scheme to further mortify himself and give Potter more ammunition against him.

"Why don't you just leave me alone?" he spat out at Harry, purposely coating his voice in as much detachment as was left within him. He plastered his gaze onto the rocky shore just past the Gryffindor's head, trying to avoid the cage of that stare. "I came out here to be _alone_, if you couldn't tell."

Harry smirked. "You're just upset I snuck up on you," he said, brushing off whatever verbal poison Draco was employing. "Now," he continued, without missing a beat, "do you want to play a game or not?"

"No," he ground out, though something in him might have said yes if it had a little more control. But fear choked him again. He saw Potter now, not just sneering beneath his glasses, but lifting a wand—spitting out a hex. His throat tightened. "No, I don't."

"I'm sorry if I startled you—"

"I was not!" Draco denied, finally tearing his eyes off the shore to glare at Potter, though such a stare did nothing to repel him, only deepen the smirk that he cast back. When he finally decided to turn and run, his toes sending an arch of silver water flying as he whirled and shot out of the valley, leaving Potter hovering over the lake, he did not hear through his rage and anxiety the sound of a furious screech, nor Harry screaming his name, nor feel the ice-cold talons seizing on his neck.


	5. Warm Blooded in the Night

**Part V – Warm-Blooded in the Night**

Harry heard the eagle screech as it tumbled toward the Slytherin Seeker, but Malfoy did not and continued on course, straight into a wickedly curved embrace of ice-white talons. Harry put his feet against the water, thrust his magic upward, and screamed out to him.

The Norwegian Bull Eagle, tossing the horns arching from its head and screeching through its terrifyingly hooked beak, met the white of the Slytherin's neck with talon's arched and came away bright red. A weight as heavy as a mountain troll plummeted into the bottom of his stomach and sucked the blood from his face. Harry watched in agonizing slowness Draco's body shudder and crumple upon his broomstick. Even if he had heard his warning, there was not a sliver of time to react, and, with a strangled gasp, he collapsed into the water below with all the resistance of a rag doll. Screeching and snorting, the bird turned its stare on Harry, flexing its now-crimson claws, prepared to further defend its territory.

Harry threw his wand out in front of him with a fury normally saved for the ugly sneer of a Death Eater and lanced the bird with nothing but enraged magic. He gave no second thought to the disappointed look Hermione might later bestow, patronizing him for being so careless with magic, no moment's consideration to the crumpled look of sadness Hagrid would bear upon discovering his prized creature injured, and not a care as to whether his reckless action might bring upon himself a detention sentence.

As soon as the wounded bird recovered from the shock of being thrown into the trees and burnt by defensive magic and flew away, Harry rushed to the form in the water. Before he could land, his feet were swinging off his broom and greeted by the bite of ice cold water up to his knees. His Firebolt flopped into the lake like a twig, severed from its sustaining magic.

"Malfoy!" Harry gasped out, reaching out towards the Slytherin. He did not give any indication of hearing him, only a long, slow, steady whimper of pain as he breathed out.

His moonlight hair was sopping wet and streamed down over his face as he pushed himself onto his hands and knees, scraping his skin against the gravel beneath him. His clothing hung about him in a heavy, dark, wet lump, sucking him back down into the black water, the surface dashed with his own blood. It disguised the violent shudder his limbs gave as he tried to rise, but could not hide where talon had torn away fabric and flesh and left red wounds. Harry watched his eyes darken and squint, trying to prevent a sob of pain, seemingly blind to him, and put his hand out to touch him.

Draco cried out in pain as fingertips brushed open flesh and whirled on Harry. His eyes fixed on him, startled white, before his body gave out beneath his movement and dashed him into the water again.

"Malfoy! Calm down, it's just me," he cried out, feeling a stab of regret and worry as he watched the pale form fall into the water again. Though, a deep, ironic voice muttered within, how was that supposed to calm him down? Wasn't it _because _of Harry that he started with such terror? "Malfoy!"

"G-get away from me!" The voice was so thin and simultaneously thick with rawness that Harry would have not believed it came from any self-respecting Slytherin—let alone a Malfoy—if he didn't watch Draco's lips curl around those words as he stuttered them out. They shuddered in his throat, barely able to leave, and died of fright soon out of his mouth.

Harry, now soaking from his knees and elbows down, stood up and reached out his hand to the frightened thing that resembled his old antagonist. Despite those long-standing beliefs that beneath his sneering veneer he was nothing but brittle and cowardly, Harry could not stomach the pained and vulnerable expression on Malfoy's white face. "You need to get out of the water. You're hurt," he said as gently as he could.

Seeming to understand just how much emotion was leaking onto his face and sullied it with a sneer as nasty as he could manage through the searing pain. "Fuck off, Potter!" he growled at him in a broken voice. He started weakly motoring backward, trying in vain to rise on his own and only finding bloodless and senseless flesh where his knees should be. Crying out in surprise, he collapsed to his back in the shallow water and lay there drained.

Harry let a corner of his mouth sling backwards. His hand, left unaccepted, went back to his side so that he could trudge through ankle-deep ice cold water, just to try to help Malfoy again and find himself shirked.

He really could find this hero-complex obnoxious, especially when it was making him give a shit at all whether Malfoy was alright, whether all those clouds in his eyes were storms of pain or just embarrassment and his injured ego boiling over.

Draco lay on his back, panting for a moment before the inky black sky overhead was replaced instead with Harry Potter, standing over and looking down at him with a most contemptible false face altered by concern. It was disgusting. It made him want to reach out and shake it from him, that lying expression. Harry Potter was only concerned with him as much as to make sure it didn't tarnish his Gryffindor honor and nothing else. So he could quit looking at him with that damned furrowed brow and half-opened mouth.

"Stop it," he told him, but Harry flinched as if he had whimpered. And then he watched him shake his head, green eyes silent and gentle. "_Stop_ it," Draco told him again, as his teeth started chattering.

"You're such a fool," Harry muttered, then knelt down and grabbed the Slytherin by the forearm and hoisted him halfway out of the water. That was all the further he managed before, like a snared snake, Draco lashed his arm, trying to rip it from his grip. It burned. He would not stand for it, would not allow his weakness conquer his better breeding and kindle those damned green eyes even more bright and worried. His ploy may have worked had he not been suddenly too anemic to shrug off the lightest grip and his legs abandoned his weight.

White sparks whirled in the night and crowded his vision, blocking it in an empty light until the edges of the world darkened and shifted colors. Strength fled from Draco's body and left him disoriented and boneless. He would have fallen into the water again had Harry not made a sound of frustration as consciousness flickered and threw his arm around his back, hoisting him bodily onto the shore and away from the ice cold.

"For acting so tough, you're collapsing an awful lot," Harry muttered to the senseless Slytherin as his body slumped against his in a wet and helpless mess.

Harry eased him gently down on the smooth, dark stones of the shore and rested his back against the trunk of a tree. A line of blood had appeared dripping down the Gryffindor's shoulder, but only from where Draco's cherry-red wounds had wept on him. The lines of damage, cutting open his shoulders and running dangerously close to the vital vessels in his neck, would no doubt soon fester and turn green if left alone. Nasty and magical things festered in the lake waters of Hogwarts.

Harry knelt beside him, his wet clothing emitting rather unseemly noises as he moved. A pang of pain struck him as he realized that there would be no well-placed slice of wit at such an observance. Malfoy's mouth yawned open in pain as he winced and tried to sit up further, eyes dark and brow worried. Harry might have laughed at the thought that the pain had eclipsed his vanity, for he hadn't yet touched the sopping blond mess that was his hair, but he knew it must be great to affect him so.

He knew pain was nothing to laugh at.

"Malfoy?" Harry asked, trying to see past his faltering lids to find some sign of cognizant light. His entire body had shuddered and fallen motionless against the tree, the only sign that he was still alive in his shallow breathing. His chin was heavy and touching his wet and red chest, hair lying heavily over his face. "Malfoy, we need to close up your wounds. I'm going to use a spell, but it's probably going to hurt." Nothing. "Malfoy?"

A low, whine ground out between Draco's harshly gritted teeth, followed by a sharp breath as he swung his head up, lifting his chin ridiculously at Harry. One last huff of pride. He could barely keep his eyes open without surrendering to a wince of pain, but still he poured on his best face, his strongest poison. "I thought I said… get the fuck… away from me."

His false bravado and watery attempt at his usual waspy defense was nothing that would scare Harry Potter away, not after he'd looked into the red eyes of Death and never succumbed to the knifepoint of Evil.

So he drew his wand from his back pocket with an unamused smirk and put the tip to his open, red flesh. And willed into it healing.

Draco had plenty of energy to scream out in surprise and sting as the magic leapt forth from Potter's wand and saturated his skin, pulling it together and hurriedly generating new cells to prevent a major scar on either side of his neck. It stung like hell, or "Fucking shit!" as Malfoy so eloquently barked out, clutching at his shoulders with each hand. His eyes turned white and pained again, but his brow drew together in a familiar and more authentic expression.

"That hurt, you damn barbarian!" Draco snapped at him, doing his best to wriggle away from the Gryffindor. His knees were touching him, making him uncomfortable. His eyes were watching him, making him burn. His magic was still lingering on his skin, smelling like rain. "Just what kind of spell was _that_?"

"It's not a spell. It's pure healing magic—it's more painful, but cleaner," Harry told him matter-of-factly. "And shut up."

But he couldn't help but let a little smile flavor his words.

Draco did not like to consider why Harry might know such advanced techniques, but neither did he like him looking at him like that. And he most definitely was _not_ going to shut up, just because the Boy-Who-Lived ordered it, just because he was soft and warm in Draco's world, which was presently populated by razor edges, stone, and ice. He didn't speak, though, for the deep and striking exhaustion, which suddenly set its teeth upon him and his icy cold body. A glare for now would suffice, despite the obvious lack of effect.

Harry, true to his Gryffindor nature, had busily begun uttering a drying spell slurred into a warming spell, his hand suddenly clamped around the tender flesh where talon's had struck. Pricks of heat and pain burst from his fingertips, yanking the flesh together and knitting new cells at the charge of Harry's sanguine magic. He finished closing the wound with a distinct flare of energy and pulled his hand away. Tiny sparks crawled out where Draco's skin turned translucent with light and, with a minute _pop!_ floated off into the night.

"We're going to get you to Madam Pomfrey." He hadn't looked in his eyes since that slight smirk, and was lifting his hand to _Accio _his Firebolt back to him. Other, however, kept close guard on the wound that had already closed. "I don't know if you've caught an infection, but I can't be sure. We shouldn't stay here much longer. That thing might come back with its mate."

Draco had never heard Harry speak in his "hero" tone of voice. He'd always been at the opposite spectrum, only receiving the overconfident challenge over the tip of his wand and the cold and empty, dispassionate dismissal out of the corner of his mouth. And his continual reference to "We," as if he had smothered his insufferable Gryffindor goodness enough to quit hating him. And then, as suddenly as he realized Harry's hand was tightening around his shoulder in what could only be described as protectiveness, he felt his stomach drop.

"N-n-o," Draco grunted, trying in vain to wriggle away from the touch as his teeth chattered. "_We_ c-can't," he sneered in fear, putting especial venom into that damnable pronoun. Harry turned and looked at him at this, a little surprised. "I am not going to suffer a detention under D-Dumbledore for you chasing m-me off into trouble!"

"I did not chase you out here—you came yourself!" Harry told him, frowning unhappily, but lightly, and turning back to watch his broom fly home into his palm.

He raised the other hand to call Malfoy's broom, and the Slytherin seeker couldn't remember feeling the weight of that hand leave his shoulder. Harry snorted to himself and stood up. "And there's no doubt that _I'll _be in trouble too, you know. Now, honestly, shut up and let's get out of here. It's cold."

Harry had straddled his broom, his wand protruding from his back pocket rather conspicuously, and reached out with Malfoy's to him. "Hurry it up," he told him, knowing exactly where to pester his Seeker nerves in order to get back to Hogwarts sooner, and treat his injuries sooner. The sooner, the better. His sneers and smirks were never completely authentic, Harry was sure now, but as soon as he was healed, he wouldn't have to watch fear ooze out of them instead, never hear Draco Malfoy whimper in honest pain again.

It was surprisingly hurtful to remember.

Draco now glared at him beneath his cream white hair, plastered messily in his eyes in a dry and tousled fashion. He flickered his gaze down to his broom, and, narrowly repressing a jealous growl upon seeing it in Harry's possession—if temporarily—and lurched forwards toward it with his right hand. And he would have snatched it away and promptly leapt away from the earth and into the sky, leaving Harry Potter to follow in secret worry and watchful protectiveness, but he fell. His blue fingertips brushed the wood, felt nothing, and were unable to clench, and his legs toppled him, smacking his head against the tree trunk soundly as he collapsed.

"Jesus—Draco!"

The Slytherin was in too much of a semi-conscious daze to answer when Harry again jumped off his broom, letting it drop on the stones, and crawled to Draco's side, lifting his head from the dirt and calling his name with more terror than he liked. Something about the sound of his head striking the trunk with a sick _thunk!_ had stirred him up. Bad. His mind was dancing around a thousand terrible ideas, topped by that he might have poisoned him somehow with an uncontrollable point of magic. They grew louder as Harry cradled Malfoy's head in his hands and felt no resistance and heard no whine. Malfoy numbly shook and kept his eyes closed.

"What's wrong? Draco?" He frowned, biting at his bottom lip. "Draco!"

He didn't wake to give Harry hell for spoiling his first name with his Gryffindor tongue. He didn't snarl and sneer, nor whimper and berate and waspishly spit insults. He shook terribly, as if he were freezing cold. Harry shook his head in confusion, pushing the bangs from his forehead to watch his eyes constrict painfully.

"Come on, Draco, what the hell is wrong with you?" he muttered, putting his hand on the wound on his shoulder to feel for magical backfiring.

He blinked in shock as he recoiled, then peeled the loose flaps of his sweatshirt away to gape at the wound. A thin, flaky white frost had settled along the curving cut, growing like a winter fungus and spreading across his bluing skin. Harry looked back to his face, now resting against his knee, and saw the slightest touch of purple around his lips and frost gathering in his moonlight hair, the heat of his warming charm dissipating.

Harry saw Hagrid again, from that morning, proudly cooing over the massive, horned raptors perched on his one, massive shoulder and eyeing the crowd of students meanly. And he recalled, as he was trying desperately to look interested for his friend's sake, noticing the thick Hippogriff hide on which they alighted, and the white frost growing out from their talons. He heard his hazy words return in clarity and grant him a wash of dread. He'd contracted Ice Poisoning.

Harry was now thoroughly convinced that he was going to spend the entire _month_ with Dumbledore and never see his broomstick again. He looked down at Malfoy's wan face turning blue and hesitated only a second.


	6. A Certain Rhythm and Bathroom Passes

**Part VI** – **A Certain Rhythm and Bathroom Passes**

Part of Snape's extraordinary verbal skills, other than pouring what sounded like centuries of resentment and deplorable experience into a single drawl and well-placed hissed syllable, was his amazing ability to make Harry feel the finger being wagged in his face just from his oily voice. Beneath the waxy glow of the blue-green candles dotting the dungeon classroom, Harry's eyes seemed to follow this imaginary finger, up and down, up and down, to the rhythm of chide, insult, and complaint. Chide, insult, complaint. Maybe occasionally the order would shift, but the rhythm was always the same. The same melody recycled for years and regurgitated at a broad spectrum of students, Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and undoubtedly an unsatisfactory Slytherin or two.

Vaguely in the middle of his growling tirade against his reckless and intolerable show of neglect, ignorance, and delinquency—the story of Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy rushing out to the Forbidden Forest for a violent Gryffindor-Slytherin duel to the death having already begun its steady circulation and perversion in the halls since last night—Harry's eyes gave up watching Snape's imaginary finger wag and settled on the middle distance. His gaze nestled safely between a few glossy red vials and he drifted away.

His first thought of a craving for the thrill of his broomstick. His mind filled with white sunlight and his body thrummed again, feeling the wind beckoning and his feet answering, diving away from the earth.

His lids drooped, and Snape was no the wiser to having lost the attention of his victim, but continued on, slinging slurs at his Gryffindor father and mother without much reaction. When he tired and grew dissatisfied without Potter's fierce face straining, unable to throw an insult back, he stalked back to his desk and prayed for the swift end of this detention.

Harry continued on through blistering skies, blissfully unaware of the dripping walls of the dungeon. His mind was bolted to his broomstick again. Grass whirred by in an unending green ripple, blue sky arching endlessly above. He felt his eyes fall close and imagined his arms spread wide, the intoxicating wind rushing through his nose and lungs—and then heard Draco cry out in the moonlight and his body fall to the water with a loud _CRACK!_

"Potter!"

Harry's head shot up and he barely contained a jump of surprise. Snape had pounded a large bezoar stone and fractured it into three smaller pieces. His dark and uncompromising eyes focused on him, daring him to defy them. "Sir?"

"There is absolutely no sleeping, _Potter_. Perhaps, had you been a little more levelheaded, you would have realized sneaking off the grounds at night is putting you sorely behind on your beauty rest," he sneered sardonically.

Harry wanted more than anything just to roll his eyes, but gritted his teeth behind his lips instead. "Yes, sir." Thankfully, the tirade did not begin anew, but faded into the background, eager to be recalled again just to berate him. Harry shot his greasy scalp a venomous look as he bent his head intently over his work and put his oily fingers to work. A grimace crossed his face, as he was left to the cruel work of his memory—which was making him relive the night before once again—though the momentary break had been a welcome relief from its details.

* * *

The moon showed no pity, as beautiful as she was, lurking over the darkened forest, towards the Boy-Who-Lived, now wobbling in the air as his semi-conscious ward squirmed and whimpered in his half-sleep. The wind, once intoxicating and brisk with its cold teeth, now chewed mercilessly, threatening all warmth in its path. It was no longer a welcoming chill. Harry had done his best to ensure that Draco would be warm enough to cling to life in the face of a potent Ice Poison, but it was not enough. It couldn't be enough. Every nerve in Harry's body sang with fear and twitched and worried, all screaming where they touched the Slytherin's motionless body, void of all familiar, scathing animosity and quickly losing the heat that fostered that life of comforting ill will.

Harry had sidled further back on the broomstick than was accustomed to accommodate Malfoy, and his Firebolt kicked and shied like an overburdened destrier. For a moment, when he had been forcefully holding it in the air with only magic, while collecting up his life-long rival in his arms like a dying rag doll, he could have sworn it sensed the nature of the second rider and attempted to rebuke him, like any good Gryffindor broom might. But—damn it—he would not simply watch anyone die, not even Draco Malfoy. He had seen enough, and he would see enough before his own time came. So he would ride, regardless of sorting.

And said passenger, as terribly Slytherin and intolerably intolerant as he had been, now was cradled between Harry's chest and the broomstick, the only things keeping him from tumbling off into the air and falling into the dark and venomous forest. Harry's throat clenched and his mind forcefully expelled the thought of Malfoy plummeting to the ground, only to be dissected and chewed by Thestrals below.

Draco's head and shoulders were limp as the rest of his body, drooping down over Harry's arm lashed across his chest, holding him back against his own stomach. Harry could feel, even through the layers of clothes that were simultaneously too thick and too thin, the warm fading. He could even hear the dry crinkle of frost flaking underneath his coat. Their legs were locked and tangled beneath the broom to keep his top-heavy body from plunging to the side, one set of bare feet clenching in the wind against the cold and the other turning white and gray and purple. Blonde hair whipped in the wind, brushing Harry's chin and stirring up a maddening itch where it touched, though he was too busy white-knuckling the broom and holding Malfoy on to indulge it.

With his wand pressed against Malfoy's chest, pinned there by his clutching hand, he would periodically mutter the strongest warming charm he could muster without setting flame to his own flesh, but it did little good. While Draco's clothes were piping hot, the body enthusiastically rejected the warmth and turned icy again within moments. Cold as a corpse. The only sign of life that kept Harry from plummeting into panic and rage was his occasional mewl of pain or broken word. But whenever Harry would call, he wouldn't answer.

"Goddamn it, Malfoy," he said in his ear, which was much closer to his mouth than he remembered at the beginning of the flight as his boneless body sagged, "it takes out all the fun of actually tormenting you myself if you let some blasted bird get the better of you. I dare say I might stop dreading you if I keep hearing you whimper like a cold pup like this."

And still, no answer.

"And it's really rude to leave me here, talking to myself, you know," he muttered again, feeling his propulsion sputter and weaken against an especially affronting northern wind. He bent forward, bracing both himself and his rag doll for it, and abandoned the fruitless warming charms to pour his energy into reaching Hogwarts all the faster.

Below him, the Forbidden Forest finally gave way to the rich emerald lawns and rolling hills of the school grounds, speeding below him. A tiny spark of hope rose up, realizing he was going significantly faster than even when he'd been chased by the Hungarian Horntail in fourth year. Harry tightened his grip around the insensate Malfoy and kicked even harder against the air as he streaked between the darkened towers.

Flickering yellow squares of light led Harry to the clock tower overlooking the cold and silent square, the fountain frozen stiff for the night, and shot by, heading for the Hospital Wing on the adjoining side. The windows, glowing gently from a candle inside, made Harry a little less anxious—but only a little. Reckless and worried, he whirled towards the largest window, where the Madam Pomfrey's unmistakable figure was standing, tending to someone in a bed. Harry was already shouting out to her before she could have possibly heard and untangled his feet from Malfoy's and threw them out to catch the sides of the window for a landing.

Kicking at the window, Harry's breath curled out in front of him in silvery cloud as he shouted out for Madam Pomfrey, Draco silent and limp now.

Harry whirled his magic beneath him to balance both himself and Malfoy on the bucking broomstick as he motored backwards, allowing room for the glowing yellow windowpane to swing open. It struck the stone wall with a thud, creating a chilly puff of air that ruffled his hair and breathed over his cold fingers that clutched Malfoy to him. Madam Pomfrey flashed a rather stunned expression to see two students hovering outside and frantically kicking the window—and those students being Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, no less! But quickly a look of efficient worry washed over her upon seeing the venomous blue-violet coloring Draco and his slumped posture. She reached out for them with one hand, the other already drawing the covers back on a nearby bed and lighting the candles around it. The cupboards of vials flew open, awaiting a selection.

"Quickly, get him inside, Mr. Potter," she urged him, waving him in. Harry wasted no time to catch his breath, but motored inside, perhaps with a little too much vigor. Madam Pomfrey was barely able to catch them both by the clothes to prevent Harry from knocking them both over in his hurry to get inside.

"Sorry," he panted out.

She straightened herself out and wrapped her arms around Draco on the broom. "I'm fine. It's this one we should be worrying about. Now, let him down," she said. "Mr. Potter, I need you to let go of him." With great difficulty, Harry uncurled his fingers from Draco's chest and unwound himself from him, from where Madam Pomfrey's warm, fragrant energy magicked him to a bed. She asked him what had gone wrong as she hurried over to the cabinets, gathering general revival potions and a pile of blankets.

Harry landed, barely registering the cold stone through his numb, bare feet. "He—We were in the forest. G-g-got attacked by a Norwegian Bull E-Eagle. Ice Poisoning, I think. He's ice cold, no m-matter what I do," Harry chattered out as he began to feel the icy grip of the night himself.

He was vaguely aware of Madam Pomfrey's returning words echoing around him, her touch gently running over a series of vials and over Draco's face as she administered them, but he was absorbed by the sight of a lifelong rival and son of a hated enemy lying before him, frosted white. He numbly gravitated forward, overwhelmed with the familiar acid of guilt and regret, looking at the arctic blue crystals growing jaggedly from his shoulder, sending a velvety white frost down across his chest. It moved shallowly, as if suffocated by the weight of the ice covering him. Harry noticed the pink flecks where frost had frozen blood on his white skin. Veins showed harsh and cobalt, slowly and surely freezing solid.

Draco looked like the crescent moon fallen to earth, his head falling limp to the pillow, revealing his long pale neck, striped blue and violet. His body, still not claimed by an icy rigidity, splayed out bonelessly, his white fingers hanging off the bed. Harry picked them up and rubbed them between his own, knowing he had little to offer in his recovery. He watched his shadowed eyelids remain closed, cream white hair tousled in every direction. Even the tissue beneath his fingernails had turned a deep purple, choked by cold, and Harry examined them with his fingertips, feeling his throat clutch, realizing how much like stone they felt.

No one deserved this. And he had brought it upon him, because he hadn't respected Malfoy's boundaries, hadn't listened the fear sparking in his eyes nor honored the sentiments in his voice. He had pushed him to flee, pushed him to the edge, pushed him into danger.

He squeezed the icy fingers and saw no reaction. He would be furious if he died before he could issue a proper apology and left him with his heavy guilt. It would be a rather Slytherin thing to do, he was sure.

His reverie snapped as Madam Pomfrey's gentle hands rested on his own chest and eased him out of the way, taking him away from the bed where the moonlight shape was turning to ice, and looked him over critically. "What about you, Mr. Potter, are you alright? Have you been infected as well?"

"No, no," he said after a moment, swallowing a lump down to speak properly. "I'm fine."

"Good. I need you to fetch Professor Snape from his room. This is far too advanced for Mr. Malfoy to battle back without serious attention," she confided to him in a low and serious tone. She petted back a lock of his hair with a growing concern in her face. "Harry, are you sure that you're alright?"

"Yes, Ma'am," he said. He choked the words out, then pulled away from her on the pretense of going to fetch Snape. The idea of seeing his least favorite face in the school had not even settled its pins and needles into him yet, as his eyes snapped immediately to the curved and frozen body of Draco Malfoy lying a few feet away, seemingly never to open his gray eyes again, his eyelashes lashed together by a bitter frost. He ignored the further words of Madam Pomfrey warning him to be careful as he went, for he was dashing out of the room before she could finish another sentence.

"And what exactly drove you to commit such an idiotic act, _Potter?_" Snape's ghastly white face growled at him, upon receiving the news. The mouth moved with fury, eyes dark with contempt, but within moments of Harry barging in through the heavy dungeon door and interrupting him over a half-finished scroll and panting out an explanation, he had abandoned the angry tirade and swept away into the darkened corridor, clutching a number of amber yellow and white concoctions.

Harry ran after him, but found himself facing a sharp lash of the tongue which stopped him in his tracks. "Unless," he hissed with venom, "you have some sort of aliment, return to your House immediately and get into bed, where you belong. You've caused enough tonight. Your mistake will be handled."

Never before had he actually passively submitted to Snape's orders before, but his feet immediately halted on the cold stone and let the Professor's dark shape stalk hurriedly off. The sooner he got to the hospital wing, the better, Harry thought to himself.

* * *

Feeling was returning to his numb toes. The blood pumping through his veins had seen to that rather quickly as he had sprinted floor by floor to the dungeon. He could curl them against the cold and feel their warmth drain into the stone. Memory slowly relapsed and eased him back into his uncomfortable position in the front row, gazing dumbly at the top of Professor Snape's head, a tedious Potions punishment essay yet to be even considered. His feet, now safely curled up within his trainers, were perfectly warm now. Last night, they'd been perfectly warm underneath the blankets, though they'd kicked and turned for hours. He imagined Draco's white toes, painted purple by ice, frosted and motionless, and turned to look once again at the closed dungeon door.

He turned around again, Snape still busily working over his fractured bezoar stone. Just as he lifted his dark sleeve and withdrew his wand, pointing menacingly at the rock fragments, Harry cleared his throat. Snape halted and glared.

"Mr. Potter," he asked without inflection.

"May I go to the bathroom?"

Snape considered and mulled with his eyebrows knotted, lips thin, knuckles whitened, but eventually something seemed to tug him away from the temptation of another sharp lash, and reluctantly said, "Fine." As Harry quickly closed the book—which had not felt the weight of his eyes in the least—and stood up from his chair, another dark look interrupted him. "But you would do well to keep your word and return within a reasonable amount of time. Otherwise, I will assign you detention myself, and be assured that my penalties for recalcitrant students are much less dismissive than the Headmaster's."

Harry did not appear phased. "Yes, sir."

The Potions professor punctuated the ending of their conversation with another glowering look, and bowed his head to concentrate on casting his next spell. Harry turned and walked down the aisle to the back of the room, pushing the door open as calmly as he could muster. Just as the three bezoars burst into tiny red flames, the door eased shut with a whine, and Harry turned and ran down the hallway.


	7. Fire and Broken Stones

**Part VII – Fire and Broken Stones**

For a moment, Harry could believe that there was absolutely nothing underhanded or selfish about repeating a charm invented by Fred and George, because it achieved his goal. It was intent to make it through the corridors, unfettered and not followed, and up to the Hospital Wing that let him overlook the Slytherin tactic of casting a Cherry Bombard Charm. It was vivid memories of ice and falling that let him slip off without grief, leaving the unfortunate Gryffindor who had nearly spotted him drenched in bright red cherry gunk, which was unbearably spicy if tasted. He turned and dashed up the winding stairwell that would lead to the Hospital Wing, brushing a speck of sticky red goop out of his hair as he went.

Harry ducked behind a column as Madam Pomfrey scuttled down the stairs a few moments later, responding to the cries for water and relief from the students below. He glanced down after her shrinking figure for a moment, then steeled himself and quickly put the rest of the stairs behind him.

The door was left open, allowing Harry to see the rows of empty and pristine beds. The only exception to those snowy white sheets and perfectly centered pillows was the furthest bed to the left. Sunlight poured in almost singularly on that bed, creating a golden circle on the stone floor below it, so hot and concentrated Harry could see trails of heated steam rising up from the edges. The figure in the bed did not move, or acknowledge his presence at the door. Harry couldn't help but pull his mouth backward in a frown, but he looked over his shoulder once more before crossing the room.

The next thing Harry noticed was the smell. Something like paper burning—no, it was the smell of burning fabric. With a small gulp of apprehension, Harry drew closer still. He saw within seconds the white sheets laid over Draco Malfoy catch flame, orange and red and hungry, and eat away at the bed. He let out a noise of surprise and jumped forward to put it out. Without thinking, he slapped his hand against the flames, hoping to thump them out of existence before they ate away at the Slytherin's flesh.

Unfortunately, it was in vain. His skin screamed and he pulled sharply away. He'd burnt his fingertips, and carefully nursed them in his mouth as he looked down. The flames crept closer, on all edges of the bed, superheated by the charmed window overlooking it. His heart swelled up until it was blocking his throat and he fumbled for his wand in his robes.

"Shit, shit, shit," Harry muttered, flustered by the smell of burning fabric, hindered by his burnt fingers.

And, as suddenly as the flames had burst into life, they sputtered out, leaving a black, eaten edge on the blankets but not a scratch on the patient at all. A pulse of white-green magic rippled out from the center, smelling distinctly like Madam Pomfrey's magic and splitting into thousands of white needles that knitted the sheets back to perfection. Harry watched, surprised, fingers stuck in his mouth as they stung and burned.

And it was finally now that Harry realized that Draco was still soundly unconscious. He was lying motionless in the bed. Not a wrinkle was out of place, not one body part misplaced or splayed out in the throws of sleep. He was as Madam Pomfrey had arranged him when she'd whisked him into bed, frozen into place. Harry felt guilty, looking down on that whitened face, lined like a canvas with the soft blue lines of his veins, half-frozen and struggling to keep free the deadly ice spreading through his body.

His hair had been gently patted back into place, no doubt while Madam Pomfrey had sat and administered to him the needed potions to keep the poison from spreading. His shoulder was wrapped tightly with bandages, though Harry could see the vestiges of snowy crystals trying to reestablish themselves on his moon-white skin.

He wrinkled his nose and reached down to brush them away, though internally he doubted such as simple gesture could help in the least. The sun concentrated on the bed was near blistering hot, but his skin cold, but not frozen anymore. It gave way timidly beneath his skin, like thawing meat, and the ice crumbled between his stinging fingers. He frowned at the ice as it flaked and disappeared in his hand, then looked back down at the statue that had once been a sneering, moving, skulking Draco Malfoy. Nothing lessened—not the growing, whining guilt nor the petulant voice that raged over the Slytherin's condition—but he found it easier to stand if he at least confirmed to himself a heartbeat.

Harry gently lifted Draco's arm by the wrist. He was careful not to snap any veins that may have turned fragile in their icy grip, and gently pressed just below his thumb. He listened with his eyes glued on the white face, the thawed eyelashes, the peaceful, un-sneering mouth. And finally, it thumped. And a little wait later, another sounded. It was no where near what it should be, but it was, and that was enough for now. He smiled weakly at the motionless body, noticing the faint dip of his chest and the delicate steam of his breath rising from his nose.

He was in good hands, anyway. There was nothing to worry about in the way of Madam Pomfrey's medical skills. She had nursed Harry back from some ridiculous and grievous wounds alike.

_So stop worrying and—_

"Get back to the dungeons immediately, Mr. _Potter_."

Harry lowered his head and swore with enough weight to turn a first-year sallow.

Snape did not hesitate to allow Harry to turn around and face him properly to begin the angry castigation, and the Gryffindor sighed and let go of Draco's arm. Before his least favorite Professor could reach him on the other side of the room, he poked the inert wizard in the side.

"You'd better wake up soon. The game is in a few days," he whispered, then turned to face his punishment, whatever it might be that Snape's dark stare might inflict, whatever length of time he had spend scratching out inane essays in the dingy Potions room. It couldn't be that bad, anyway.

Snape halted before him and his robes drifted around him from his momentum, as if snap at Harry themselves, adopting their owner's fury. But suddenly, not even his height or his snarled expression struck fear into Harry anymore. Snape looked flustered, almost. Worried? About his Slytherin student, he must be. Hell, he was too, and he and Draco had signed a wordless contract to hate each other years ago.

Snape narrowed his eyes sharply at him. "Next time," he drawled, "I would ask you to actually go to the _bathrooms_ to relieve yourself, Potter." He only gave Harry one more moment's bother before levitating the fiery bezoar stones over to Malfoy's bed and turning his back on him. "Three more weeks of detention for blatant disobedience to be administered under myself," he grunted. "Now return to the dungeons, Mr. Potter."

"Wait, what are those for?"

Snape turned a hawkish look on him. "It's time to _leave_, Mr. Potter."

Harry stole one last glance at the broken crescent in the bed, before he reciprocated the sour look and stalked back toward the low, dark classrooms of Hogwarts where he would be spending a great deal of time in the near future.

* * *

Harry told Ron and Hermione the truth when he was finally released back into the outer world and no longer subjected to the cold, clammy air and slick walls of the dungeons late at night. He'd spent the entire night trapped beneath Snape's razor sharp stare and lashed by his oily voice, just to trudge to the common room to collapse to the couch, unable to even accommodate the thought of doing his homework.

The day had been equally populous with sources of stress. By now the Ravenclaw story had Harry and Draco nearly killing each other in a jealous rage over the same pretty Hufflepuff girl. Slytherins insisted that Harry had harassed and hexed the Malfoy heir and laughed and left him in the woods for Professor Snape to rescue like a white knight. Harry was rather sure Snape didn't own a single article of white, but it was not those stories that upset him. It was his very own House. Gryffindors insisted that Draco, freshly branded with the Dark Mark, had threatened a hapless first-year with death if Harry didn't hand himself over, and Harry had cleverly led him straight into the claws of an icy demise.

And he just didn't have the energy at the moment to defend him against their enthusiastic slander.

Harry told them the truth because he wanted at least _some_one to know it, rather than simply conjure some vicious fiction in its place. He wanted someone to know he had not, in a thousand years, ever wished something as heinous as Draco's wounds on any one Voldemort himself. And, as surprised and skeptical as Hermione and Ron might have appeared as he recounted the tale—carefully edited and revised, of course—it felt good to finally speak the truth.

Harry had been careful to leave as many incriminating details out as possible because even the slightest apparition of a friendship with a Slytherin constituted an unwritten crime in Gryffindor. Those who had started friendships or relationships despite the Snake and Lion rivalry had found themselves becoming shunned and looked-down-upon by their fellow housemates. And, if you didn't want to become an outcast, you broke off the relationship.

Ron and Hermione had never done any such thing, and Harry knew it was ridiculous to think they'd be anywhere but at his side in full support. But he still didn't want to suffer further over Malfoy's icy body and all the problems it left boiling in its wake. He felt bad enough about it. Rather predictably, Ron began to inquire as to why he was out at that hour of night—with ferret-faced Malfoy, no less.

"I was just going flying, and he was already out there. It was an accident."

"But why did you have to—?"

"Ron!" Hermione squinted unhappily at him and he puckered a frown back at her. "You're being ridiculous. Don't you believe what Harry told you?"

"I was only wondering, you don't have to get so steamed," he muttered back, then turned to Harry. "Sorry, mate. It's just so strange, y'know."

Harry could completely commiserate with Ron in this instance. "Yeah," he nodded, rubbing at his head and further ruffling his black hair. "It _is_ really strange."

They fell into an unusual silence, sitting and lying on the couch and chair gathered around the fire in the Common Room, looking at each other with differing expressions: Ron with muffled curiosity and apology, Hermione with careful, analyzing eyes and a temperate smile, and Harry with exhaustion, barely waning guilt, and longing towards the door. But that didn't last long. Hermione indulged herself a slight smirk Draco himself might have approved of and stood up from the chair, clapping the book she'd kept for company firmly shut in one hand. That caught Ron's attention and mildly shook Harry from his stupor, so that he tilted his head backwards on the couch to look at her.

"Stop being so mopey, the both of you," she told them. "Why don't you go practice some more? You know the game's in only two days, right? There should be a free pitch right now."

Harry groaned at the thought. Internally, he never wanted to look at another broomstick, lest throw his leg over it and feel the wind between his toes. That opened up a lane in his mind that led to uncertain and painful ideas and memories. But he opened his mouth and said instead, "I don't know. I'm kind of tired, 'Mione."

"No, you're not, not really," she said, strolling over to him to look down at him. His green eyes blinked back up at her, the lines of worry and sleep-lacking nights barely concealed by the rims of his glasses. "You're feeling sorry for yourself about what happened out in the forest. You need to take your mind of it for a while."

"Yeah, Harry," Ron chimed in. "A good fly cheers anybody up."

"Excluding me, of course," Hermione reminded them with a smile, despite the pained expression she adopted upon thinking about careening through the air on little more than a carved and charmed stick. Ron clamored off the chair and leaned on the back of the couch, looking down at Harry with much the same look as an excited puppy beneath his thick red hair and between his prominent freckles.

"I'd like to practice my goal-keeping, anyway," Ron told him. "And there's no harm in a little more training when it comes to the Slytherin match."

Harry wanted to tell them Draco was the only challenge about that game anymore these days, but he was to tired to say the name and invoke the screaming and ice in his mind. So he agreed and was led out of the Common Room, his body aching, though Harry couldn't tell anymore if from want to fly or bone-piercing exhaustion.

* * *

The days came and went; Monday and the Quidditch match of the school year came without Draco Malfoy, trumpeting on without him as he froze and burned in the furthest bed in the hospital wing. Inside the dark, crowded atrium that housed the anxious Gryffindor team on the edge of the pitch, Harry Potter paced, white-knuckling his Firebolt. Slivers of light poured in through the crooked boards, and his eyes fixated on them, as if he could see through them, staring decidedly in the direction of the North Tower. Sweat was already crawling down the back of his neck, steam rising up from his short-tempered breath into the bottom of his glasses, fogging in a crescent shape.

With the other pale faces of his teammates at his back and watching him carefully, he continued to pace at the doors like a panther at the bars of its cage. This is where Oliver Wood would have been solemnly injecting his team with the hunger to win with carefully placed words and a flurry of insights, but Harry had never been that eloquent, even about Quidditch. And today, he was riding on two days' worth of anxiety and anger and worry. There would be no speech.

Ron stood the closest to him, being little more than worried by Harry's display. Some of the younger teammates, having heard some wild and slanderous stories in the halls of how he'd slain his rival Seeker, hung decidedly back and hid themselves behind their brooms. He grimaced and whispered to Harry, who was still pacing and watching the North side, "Hey, mate, are you okay?"

Harry hesitated for a moment and worked up a gentle smile for his friend's sake. "Yeah," he answered, an edge of wind to his voice, "I'm just ready to get this over with."

Ron was about to open his mouth and inquire further—for Harry never spoke like that about a Quidditch game, least of all about the Snake and Lion match. But he didn't get the chance, for the doors flung themselves open at the beckon of the announcer and they spilled forth out onto the pitch. Harry strode slightly ahead of them out to the middle where Madam Hooch stood with the Golden Snitch bouncing in her hand.

Across the pitch, the Slytherin team emerged in tandem and they met at the center, robes as emerald green as the grass beneath their feet. The captain who came to meet him was a fourth-year Harry barely recognized, but his eyes wandered over the rest. He knew that Draco still lay in a white bed that periodically burned and that his broom was lost to the fangs of the Forbidden Forest, but he looked.

And disappointment welled anew.

"Alright, everyone. You know the rules—play clean, have fun, and—" Madam Hooch's standard fare continued in the background as the two teams came face to face for the coin toss automatically. They blocked out the sound of her voice to stare each other down, Serpents hissing at Lions who hissed willingly back.

Harry looked to the replacement who stood to the right of the mean-faced Captain, a short, lithe-looking third year who, by his knavish grin, couldn't believe his good luck. He caught Harry's gaze upon him, and flashed a wide smile at him. "Hey," he whispered. "I just wanted to thank you for what you did in the forest. You know, to Malfoy. Now I'm finally getting a chance to play. Thanks a lot, Potter."

Harry did not move except for the flaring of his nostrils.

Madam Hooch raised her voice, throwing her hand out to catch a glinting silver coin. "Call it, boys. Heads or tails."

"Heads."

"Tails," Harry gritted out, eyes still trained cold on the Seeker.

Madam Hooch lifted her other hand, showing the coin to turn possession over to the Slytherins for the first play of the game. But it did not matter. For when she sounded her whistle, released the Snitch, and the players mounted their brooms, the game was already decided.

Harry turned and _attacked_.

The announcer screamed a few moments later in stunned incredulity. "Unbelievable! Just _unbelieveable_! Harry Potter has caught the Golden Snitch just _one minute _into the game of the year! _Gryffindor wins, one-hundred and fifty to zero! _That's _definitely_ a record!_"_ And the gold and maroon stands burst into a roar audible to every corner of Hogwarts.

Even the Hospital Wing, where Professor Snape stood and stared out the window, grimacing as the words drifted up to his ears.

"It seems Potter is sorely missing his competition," he muttered to himself, squinting sourly in the sunlight. Seeing that the game was already over and there was little more to observe, the Potions master turned away from the window to see his young charge sitting up weakly in bed, death-white face turned toward the echoing words of the announcer. "Draco. You're awake."

He was, however, strong enough to flash his godparent a flinty, displeased, childish look that nearly turned his eyes black. His voice was still recovering from the icy grip and his throat was raw like the earth after the spring thaw. "I missed the game," he croaked out.

"Yes," Snape told him without any sympathy, just a cold acceptance of the fact. After all, it was only a game. There should be no need to be so upset over such a trivial thing, after barely pulling away from the snap of Death's jaws. "You're lucky to have survived such a severe infection," he informed him solemnly, still standing at the window.

Draco's angry gaze had settle safely in the middle distance and Snape could see him listening intently to the announcer and coming to emotional conclusions. He watched disappointment flare up as he finally realized Slytherin's loss—an astounding one at that—and a grimace etch itself into his face. Had it been any other student, he would have advised them against an overly emotional reaction in such a condition, where the infection was still a threat, but to tell Draco to smother his emotions was to build up a much stronger ones, his anger and fear.

Without lifting his eyes from his sheets, Draco asked, feigning coolness of spirit and composure, "So, how did you cure me?"

Snape considered him for a moment, gauging his odd reaction. Usually, there was more fire to be spat from his mouth, more sour looks and sneers to bestow and exercise his frustration, but he'd smothered it. He was slightly disappointed in a way, not to see that defiance to which he was accustomed. He moved silently to stand at the end of the bed and explained. "There has been no potion discovered to cure Ice-Poisoning, so I used a bezoar stone which was split into three separate pieces and ignited. If given the chance, the infection will recover and reinvest areas that have been cleared by the bezoar. It is useless to simply force them down one's throat. It takes hours and hours to make sure the fire and antidote can seek out each patch of infection until each is completely eradicated."

Draco continued watching the sheets, the dark circles beneath his eyes beginning to take on a great and noticeable weight. It was then that he adopted a much more familiar grimace and lifted his head to stare just short of Snape's face. "How long have I been here?"

"Three days."

"Does anybody know?"

"Aside from the entire school?" Snape drawled, furrowing his brow slightly. Draco lifted his eyes completely now but dismay cowered in them yet. It was then that Snape understood to whom his godson was referring. "No. There's been no letters sent." He paused. "But, if you would like me to, I could—"

"No," he quickly interrupted in a croak of a voice. "That's not necessary." His anger boiled up again, spilling over into his emotions and muddling them like tainted water. His slate gray eyes remained on his sheets, which no longer burned in order to preserve his freezing body. The thaw had released him back into the grips of his sentiments. "You may leave now."

Snape didn't waste time. There was little to be gained by hovering over such a temperamental child, especially when he felt so inclined to compensate for his condition with hostility. So he obliged him his childish demand and, with full intention of slinking back to the dungeons to do some researching—perhaps he might be able to brew a potion-based antidote for Ice Poisoning, with time and luck—headed for the door.

He met Harry Potter there as he came swinging around the corner, still half-dressed in his rich red and gold Quidditch robes. His glasses were slightly askew, Snape noticed, which did little to disguise the anxiety in the green of his eyes, or the agitated flush of his scar beneath his tousled hair. He appeared to have enough composure to at least leave his broom behind before rushing into the school and traversing all the staircases leading to the Hospital Wing. Snape watched his face drop when he registered just who he'd run into with a certain pleasure.

"Oh, shit," he muttered, eyes wide.

Snape's mouth curled. "Ten points from Gryffindor," he decreed with relish.

Harry's impatient flash of a gaze growled at him, but gave him no real resistance. That nervous energy that had driven him there quickly urged him back into motion, and he rolled to the side and tensed to continue his dash inside, but Snape's magic was just as fast as his young reflexes, if Snape's own were not. Harry grunted as a _Wingardium Leviosa _forcefully nudged him back into place, view of the doorway blocked by his body. "Now, Mr. Potter, shouldn't you be celebrating your…_triumphant_ win with your House and teammates?" he drawled in an oily voice.

Harry again flashed him that knife-like look and surged forward, rolling to the other side. Another flash of sharp, acrid magic replaced him again, just feet from the doorway. He was sick of this.

"I came to see if Malfoy is alright," he grit out. "Is that a crime?"

Snape stared down back into that fiery green stare without fear. "Return to your House, Potter. Mr. Malfoy is in perfectly capable hands."

Harry glowered at him. "Sure, but is he _all right_, I asked?" he hissed out in frustration.

Unfazed, the Potions Master continued on, ignoring his question. "You are on fragile standings as it is, Potter. It is only on Professor McGonagall's fervent intervention that your broomstick was not confiscated and your Captain's badge revoked. Now, if you would," Snape drawled delicately and reached his hand out, gesturing towards the empty corridor leading away.

Harry hated him so intensely in that moment he wanted to light that oily hair on fire and watch him screech and jump in fright—but could not. His stinging, smoke-smelling magic still barricaded the doorway from entering, but it could not bar his eyes from travelling across. Before Snape shoved him away, he saw Draco, a pale figure too distant to distinguish any ice in his blood, sitting in bed and watching them.

He _so_ hated Snape. He indulged himself a sneer as he stalked begrudgingly away.


	8. Hollow Bones and Smiles

**Part VIII – Hollow Bones and Smiles**

Harry Potter kept glancing abnormally about his surroundings, as if he hadn't already lived there for four solid years and known the intimate cracks and chips in the stone by heart for nearly that long. Hermione nearly felt obliged to take him by the elbow to prevent him from running into the walls and trophy cases as they passed, but suppressed the urge and instead, coupled with Ron's careful gaze, watched him go. When he would accidentally bump shoulders, he would issue a genuine but distracted apology and continue surging through the crowd, head lifted and turning like a wolf patrolling a dark stretch of woods. He moved thick with purpose. Ron and Hermione, noticeably lacking any books, followed a distance behind as Harry nearly loped through the halls.

Ron tilted his head towards Hermione, after mimicking one of Harry's wide-cast, probing gazes around him to perhaps catch sight of whatever he was looking for, and said, "Are you sure he's alright?"

"He said nothing happened to him."

"Then why is he doing this? It's a Sunday. Usually he's out practicing—"

"Or begging me to do his work—"

"—or something… But this is just strange. He's been to every corner of the school. And it feels weird, watching him like this," he admitted, furrowing a brow in uneasiness. "He's our friend."

"And as his friends, we should do our best to understand what's upsetting him—and do our best to _avoid_ upsetting him in the process," she reminded him. She quickly grabbed him by the arm to yank him sharply to the right, down another corridor where Harry had quickly darted moments before, slinking out of the crowd. She elbowed him to cover up his hiccup of surprise and continued. "Madam Pomfrey said he had a perfect bill of health—no hexes or curses. Not even a bruise."

"Sure," Ron said, turning to the side to avoid a second-year heading the opposite direction and keep in step with Hermione. "But you know him—always downsizing his problems so he can get something done. He never wants that kind of attention." When Hermione offered a thoughtful hum, eyes still trained faithfully on Harry's tensed back, he continued, gesturing cautiously. "Think Malfoy might've done something to him?"

It was here that Hermione's arm lashed out and stopped them both dead in their tracks. The wind in Ron's chest left him in a huff of surprise and mild discomfort and Hermione hissed and lunged to the side, hiding behind the corner, just as Harry stopped and shot green piercingly over his shoulder. Ears pricked. He considered the stone wall intensely, but, before a conclusion could be drawn, something inaudible seemed to sound and change the color in his gaze. Just as suddenly as he had stopped and turned, he turned again and started back down the corridor, gait greatly accelerated.

Hermione was the first to brave a glance around the corner, being wary enough to collect her curly locks in her hand before leaning forward. When she didn't give a response, Ron nosily rose to his tiptoes and tried staring over her head. She quickly bent back and thwapped him on the shoulder for being so impatient, then stepped out into the corridor. "He's gone," she told him.

Ron nursed his shoulder gently as he watched the empty space where Harry had been moments before his trainers and his preoccupation carried him off. "I dunno, Hermione. We should just leave him alone. If he wanted to tell us about it, he would."

Hermione issued one last sigh before turning around and starting back. "You're right. Let's go back to the Common Room." Ron quickly fell into step beside her, while silently running through all the curses and hexes he thought Malfoy might know.

* * *

The singular convenience of recently reviving from an ice coma was the sudden influx of work to be made up—scrolls to be written, potions to study, charms to practice. That meant Draco would be temporarily relieved of the dogging, worried hands and arms of Pansy and dull and insistent faces of Crabbe and Goyle, constantly seeking direction of their brutish energies. The latter two had no inclination whatsoever to ever set foot in the school's library, and Pansy refused to bore herself by following Draco there. So he was in a mildly pleasant mood when he finally slipped away, homework in hand, and accumulated a nice pile of books around him on the table, secluded from the world in his work.

Aside from the tendency of his fingertips to grow much colder than the rest of his body much more quickly, there were no lingering symptoms of his affliction. No longer translucent, his skin quickly regained its gentle white color and his hair again was deliberately arranged for the best aesthetic impact. He wore a rich, black sweater and insulated socks inside his shoes. He'd become rather accustomed in his sleep to being surrounded by heat and now the world seemed rather chilly in comparison.

He unwound a fresh expanse of parchment as he flipped open to the allocated page in his Potion's book. Before picking up his pen, though, he paused to curl up his cold fingers and hold them to his mouth, breathing hotly on them to give them some fleeting warmth. It was then that an innocent-enough movement caught his eye and brought him to look up at Harry Potter approaching his table.

He swore into his knuckles as they grew cold again.

The scar beneath his bangs was red again, flushing out over his forehead and leaking into his cheeks, which were also colored as if he'd been running. Draco frowned at the thought, wondering exactly why that was the first thing he noticed. The next two details were far more disturbing—one, the pile of books he quickly dumped on the opposite side of the table, implying an intent to sit down across from him, and two, the hideously pleased smile that marred his face.

Watching him defensively, Draco allowed him to sit but did not utter a word. He did not lift his eyes from the intruder on his solitude, but ran through in his mind the image of the surrounding tables, scanning the memory for anyone sitting or standing nearby who might glimpse them sitting together.

Well, the risk was present only for a second, anyway. He didn't need to worry too much—he was going to be leaving as soon as Potter got settled, anyway.

Emotion suddenly made itself known, sinking teeth deep within unreachable areas, and Draco felt something tear away and fall out of reach and out of control when Harry sat and looked straight up and into him. And in response, something from the pit of his stomach leapt too eagerly up into his throat to take its place. He quickly threw all his effort into a frown as sour as he could make it before it would all register on his face.

Harry opened his mouth to speak, but suddenly, as if struck by lightning, the joyful color in his face drained and his pleased look dropped. Quite suddenly, he had no idea of what he was going to say, after spending the good part of his Saturday looking for him.

So Malfoy bit in.

"Got a staring problem, Potter?" Malfoy drawled venomously at him, even though he had lost himself in that green and felt unable to tear away. "What do you want? I'm not going to waste my time on your homework, if that's what you came for."

"N-no," Harry burst out nervously, "I just came to see if you were alright."

Draco arched a brow at him in an unapologetic acrid motion. "Well, I'm fine. So leave."

Neither moved, chained by an electric stare neither could or would break. Harry blinked rapidly, trying desperately to create a response that would not immediately prompt venom, as thinly veiled as it was. To make his point a bit more bitterly, Draco even folded his arms and leaned back in his chair.

"Well," Harry started, still grasping for the words. "I'm sorry you missed the game because of me," he tried, watching Draco's face carefully for his reaction.

The Slytherin scoffed with such derisive force Harry blinked, wide-eyed at him in hurt surprise. "Liar," he hissed. "The entire damned school adores you for your spectacular win. You love it."

"Love what, exactly?" Harry asked in return, looking nauseated by the idea and rubbed by Draco' disrespect as he lowered his head, as if to continue silently studying, ignoring his presence. "Contrary to what you may believe, I _don't_ want all that attention. And I _am_ sorry about what I did. I never wanted something like that to happen to you."

"Lying again, Potter," he cooed back in low, mocking singsong, not lifting his head. "I don't think you'll be quite as attractive with your nose growing like that."

He turned a page and awaited the sharp, biting response he needed to base another slight off, but received only the quiet breathing of the books around them. Despite himself and his pride, Draco looked up at his rival, momentarily forgetting his veneer, and saw him stare back, disappointed and pulling back the corner of his mouth, as if he were in pain. The biting piece of pride-stained advice he usually imparted at this junction never came.

Harry sighed, picked up his books, and left.

And for some reason, it didn't fulfill Draco the way it had before.

* * *

Hermione watched Harry over the top of her book, looking hollow in the face of constant congratulatory smiles and thanks clouding the Gryffindor Tower since his record setting win, until she was exhausted of watching him drift off into memory for a hazy stretch of time, groan and shake his head, and try in vain to rub the pain out of his temple and concentrate on his empty scroll. It was enough to drive any sane woman through the nearest wall As much as she tried, after an hour and a half of this repeated behavior, she could no longer ignore it. She clapped her book shut and waited for him to tiredly shake his reverie and look up at her. She resisted a sound—whether of pity or surprise—at the cast of his eyes, visibly watching a memory just past her, but still attempting to give her part of his imprisoned attention.

"'Mione?" he murmured. Still wrestling his own imagination, he barely noticed that his fingers had relaxed, letting the wet tip of his pen hit the parchment and blot jet black over the words he _had_ managed to scribble.

She softened the somewhat jarring greeting of clapping her substantial book with a worried and gentle smile. "Are you alright?" she asked, implying by her voice she wanted a more thorough answer than his automatic affirmative. He had a habit of pushing the details of his condition away when they would be embarrassing or endangering of someone else. Of course, since the Triwizard Tournament, that habit had leaked into other areas of his life and he often pushed pain away for the better sake when there was no real better sake to be protected.

Harry paused, but answered with, "Yeah."

She arched a brow at him and he felt his stomach clench. It was not angry, but it looked too familiar for comfort. "You're not just saying that so I'll be quiet?" she asked with a small smile.

Harry pushed himself up on to his elbows, then sat back and folded his legs to look at her properly for a moment. Then he seemed to lose his nerve and gaze at the carpet. "Maybe," he sighed, rubbing the side of his head. "I don't know," he added in a huff of tired honesty.

Around them, the Common Room had fallen into quiet and lifelessness. Harry had barely noticed the time ticking by and the inhabitants pouring out, and Hermione had been observant enough to know that she'd only have a chance at an honest answer when the company had gone. So she graced him with the most understanding expression she had and asked, "Would you like to talk about it?"

"No."

"How about I do your homework, then?"

He whipped his head up in shock at this and looked, dumbfounded, at her. The moral core that ruled him might have objected, but the tired, human part didn't let the good thing pass by unexplored. "Really? You would?" His excitement flared, but again bent and flickered in uncertainty. "How come?"

Hermione smiled knowingly and reached forward for his book. And, cautiously, he offered it to her. "I just thought you might want to take a late-night flight to help clear your mind."

Harry stared quietly at her as she gripped the book and started flipping through, pulling her pen out to the ready. Quite suddenly, she let out a squeak of surprise as Harry threw his arms around her shoulder and held tight. She blinked, feeling his lips spread in a smile against the top of her head. "Thanks, 'Mione. I owe you."

"No, you don't." She pushed him off of her and glanced up to witness a grin flash across his face. And in the next moment, he was jumping over the arm of the couch standing between him and his broomstick, stored beneath his bed. She allowed herself a mild chuckle of amusement before putting the pen to the parchment and writing, knowing exactly where Harry was headed with his Firebolt.

The South Tower over the Dungeons and the Slytherin dorms.


	9. Of All the Night Skies in All the World

**Part IX – Of All the Night Skies in All the World, You Pick This One**

The world was burning red and white and Draco was deep in its fiery throat, unable to move. He moaned and water, boiling and melting, poured out from his mouth and dripped from the corners of his eyes. It burnt his skin as it poured down, and turned black and evaporated on the flames, billowing into smoke. All in all, it was hell. And there was no escaping from it, no matter how hard he tried to wrench his arms or force a cry through his throat. He burnt and his icy insides thawed, turning to mush that bit against his skin.

He felt the flames turn on his feet, turning them into blackened, icy stumps. Goddamn, but was he sick of dreams like this. The higher part of his brain sat to the side, sadly watching the nightmare grow and darken without any ability to stop it. And the lower shrieked and reeled in terror, the pain as real as anything it knew.

Just as he had resigned himself to a fiery momentary death, and just as the lower brain abandoned its pained howl, something touched his shoulder and turned him around.

Harry watched him with eyes as green and cool as life itself and pinned Draco to the spot with the stare.

"Potter?" he asked in a watery voice.

Harry lifted his hand and flicked him on the forehead.

He slapped his hand across his wound, grimacing. "Hey, what the hell did you do that for? Potter! Hey, answer me!"

But the Gryffindor did no such thing, because before he had the chance, Draco felt an unconquerable surge of rage and jealousy sweep over him, fanged by another terrible emotion he refused to acknowledge, and saw the Golden Snitch hovering just in front of him. Before Harry could see it, Draco snatched the opportunity and threw his hand forward, furiously clenching around it. He grinned with victory as he lifted his hand to admire his prize, and sneered up at Potter.

There was a bloody hole in his chest.

Draco felt his mouth open and pelt out a groan of surprise as he watched Harry's face go white, his scar distressed red, and his mouth black with blood. Already screaming, Draco felt the Snitch in his hand turn coal-hot and dropped it. Harry fell with it, and collapsed at Draco's feet, decomposing with a sickening smell.

So he woke up, yelling his name, bent over the side of his bed, and threw up.

Snape had warned that the Ice Poisoning treatment could be accompanied by a number of side effects from the lingering bezoar fragments in his body, one of which was vomiting. Until they had successfully found and conquered enough poison in the body, no discrimination between frost or bacteria, the bezoars would continue to course his body, looking for infection to cure. Draco had felt fine since his discharge, but apparently they had stumbled across a buffet in his sleep.

Unfortunately, as thickheaded as he could usually count on Crabbe and Goyle to be, they were very thin-sleepers at the sound of Draco retching. And, unfortunately, the entire dormroom had chosen to show their concern by gathering in a huddling, half-naked circle around him, muttering and talking and asking. It had taken nearly ten minutes to get from the side of his bed where he'd woken to the bathroom, and as soon as he had, he collapsed to his knees and repeated the delightful ritual.

After about twenty minutes, and more than one bout of fake retching, the crowd outside the bathroom had quit their useless display of concern—which looked more like curiosity and barbarian pleasure to Draco. He gave up trying to contain himself and stumbled back toward his bed, hair disheveled and his mouth smacking distastefully of recycled roast beef.

His toes were still prickly cold and his face undoubted washed pale all over again. He swore he would kill Potter for inflicting this on him in a moment of tired, petulant pain. Pressing his hand flat against his jumping stomach, the Slytherin reached out for the blankets of his bed, slowly releasing the body heat they stored. His roommates were already drifting off into sleep and starting up a nightly chorus of snores when Draco got one knee onto the mattress.

It was then he was sure God had decided to punish him, for there came a tapping at the window.

And no one tapped at the third-story window without good reason, either.

Draco hesitated and lifted his head to squint sourly at the moonlight filtering through the window. It fell in a cold and silvery square, checkered by the serpentine metal flourishes, and was obscured by what could only be the figure of a broom and a rider.

The snake in his belly screeched.

When Draco gave no immediate response, the shadowy figure seemed to lose its conviction and fidget nervously outside the window. It turned, looking about, and hanging on each pregnant pause that went unanswered. Seemingly oblivious to the sour look Draco leveled at it, silently urging it to leave him be, it hovered closer and reached forward again. The window once again sounded, pealing like thunder's bark in the silent room. No one stirred around him, and Draco cautiously watched each of his fellow Slytherins for signs of the slightest scrap of conscienceless—or sentience, for that matter—finding none.

Only when Harry knocked the fifth time that Draco could no longer stand it and lashed forward, throwing the windows. The snake slithered into a knot and the cold night air rushed back in return, blowing past him as cold as the memory of Potter's arms and a burning bed. He set his face in a welcoming grimace and waited for the terrible dance to begin.

Despite all thoughts of logic, Draco couldn't help but glance to Harry's chest and allow the smallest wisp of something drift out from his clenched stomach when he saw it wasn't emptied and bloody. And he then lifted his gaze to meet his stare. He came to regret that action when the floor dashed out from underneath him and he felt that clenched stomach finally unwind and color rush up and out into the tips of his fingers and the smoky corners of his worried mind. Like flowers blossoming and then rapidly dying away, the sensation crept beneath his skin until he blinked a moment later, and it faded. He shook his head and nervously watched the Gryffindor, not making a move.

Harry Potter smiled almost ecstatically and nudged his broom, a willing, strutting horse, to swing back and face the window. "Hey," he greeted. His hushed tone barely reined in the raw delight in his voice as he drew in close, trying not to wake the others. "You doing anything?" He settled into the doorframe by setting his feet on the sill, holding himself still with one hand.

Draco instinctively took a step back. No need to be _that_ close to that green and toothy smile. "Nothing, actually. Being undead and all allows me to sit up, doing absolutely nothing all night, simply waiting for you to knock," he drawled, squinting. "Of _course_ I'm doing something, prat. I'm going back to bed."

He reached up to shove Potter out of the window by any means necessary and return to the peaceful bliss of dreamless sleep, to escape the color and wolf-like intensity of sounds he now felt, hearing every crease and whisper of Potter's clothes and slightest exhalation. It was all he could do to focus on laying his head on the pillow when he gripped his shin, bracing to push him away. Harry quickly grabbed his wrist and held it in place, crouching over to do so.

"Come on, Malfoy. Hear me out." He said this, bent over, still grasping his white wrist. His dark hair falling away from his face, his face diamond-bright and scar scabbed over, Harry caught Draco's face as he flinched in surprise. And there they stood, a peculiar statue, the Slytherin only as far away as his arm would allow and the Gryffindor cautiously leaning forward. He blinked up at Harry, who only grinned. "I've got something I know you want."

Suddenly his lips were awfully dry and his throat awfully inefficient at taking in air. He bent back, still tugging at the hot grip around his hand. "And what is that?"

Mercifully, he let go, and leaned back to rummage through his pocket. Draco quickly stepped back to a breathable distance, feeling his lungs burn from inadequate breaths, and watched. Harry produced some minute thing from the left pocket, then reached around his back to snatch out his wand. Gracing him with a momentary glance and small smile, he tapped it, muttering "_Engorgio."_

Draco blinked dumbly for a moment, then went forward, seizing at the object with a gleam of shock and surprise. "My broom," he managed out, poison-free. Harry let it go with a liberal grin of satisfaction and stood back, simply watching Draco clutch it and look it over for signs of injury. Unable to stop himself, he even reached down towards the straw, running his fingers over where he'd magically carved his name into it.

The grin widened. He, too, had carved his name into his Firebolt, though he'd done it by hand.

As pleasantly surprised as Malfoy seemed to be at the return of his broom and holding it again, and as pleasantly as that made Harry thrum, Malfoy was certainly not happy when he looked up and Harry asked, "Wanna go for a fly?"

Someone made a low gurgling noise in their sleep in a nearby bed before he could consider an answer. Draco jumped at the sound, turning to stare cautiously at the rest of the room. "Damn it, Potter," he whispered fiercely, "don't wake anybody up! Keep it down. I don't want to be seen associating with _you_ in the middle of the night."

Harry took this with a surprising amount of grace, standing in the window, the cold wind at his back. Only his eyebrow lifted and the corner of his mouth turned in humor. "I'm not asking you to _associate_ with me," he drawled quietly, smirking inwardly at the possible double interpretation in that phrase, "I'm just asking you to come outside, with your broom, and buzz around for a while. Play Catch the Snitch. Goof around—you know."

Draco did his best to look menacing and polished while standing in his pajamas before the Boy Who Lived, holding his broomstick in a rather teddy-bearish fashion. He gave a look of absolute distaste at the words, 'Goof around.' Inclining his nose ever so slightly at Harry, he answered, "Yeah, I know. I quite vividly remember each instance, and can recall no memory of enjoyment from any of them. Honestly, is bickering with you and nearly being _murdered_ your idea of fun?"

"Actually…" Harry said, smiling slightly, recalling the years of near-death experiences under his belt.

Draco set his jaw forward and glowered. "Well, it's not _mine,_" he sneered. "So bugger off."

It had returned. The snake. Harry saw it crawl into every genuine instinct in that blonde head and sink its dripping fangs into them, pumping them full of venom and defensive rage. Writhing in fear and anger. He felt his broom give a kick of protest and hover uneasily, remaining unnaturally near the Slytherin lair for a long period of time, requesting the freedom of the open skies over the cramped nervousness of the window. He drew his brows together, knowing full well it would further anger Draco, but unable to constrain it. "Malfoy, please don't lie about it."

"I am not lying," he hissed back, the snake lending its voice to this new argument.

_An argument it caused_, Harry accused within his mind. He could see Malfoy's broom trying to buck in his own arms, hungry from lying in neglect in the Forbidden Forest. And he could see the underlying agreement in his eyes, the color of the clouds covering his emotions, but saw the determination not to acknowledge them in his solid grimace. He knew the bitter dedication with which he was resisting, heard the desperation in his voice ruling his mind.

And he knew Malfoy was far too selfish to deny his fear control. The snake would not uncoil itself for anyone else, and it was useless to push him any further.

Harry had made the decision to leave with more than a pang of disappointment, but did not move immediately away from the window under Draco's withering stare. He remained there and stared back, hoping that it might somehow change the circumstance in his favor, but the Slytherin only bit his lip and stared more forcefully, drying to drive him off. Harry sighed and shook his head. Beneath his bangs, he felt his skin itch and burn unhappily.

"Fine. Forget it," he muttered, turning and launching off the stone ledge with the scorn of a crow.

Draco snorted and walked into the wind kicked up from Harry's hasty retreat to close the window once again. "About time," he grumbled to himself, now unable to resist shivering from the cold bite of the night air. "Damn git. How dare he barge in here like that. It's way past his bedtime, anyway."

Malfoy stopped once he'd gripped both panes and tensed to pull them close. Out in the black and yellow and deep green landscape, he could see Potter pause in midair to look back at the window, too far to see exactly what crossed his face but close enough to see it in his body. The wind turning his hair to a crazed black blur moving about his face and bare toes flexing nervously, Draco saw disappointment slowly begin seeping from every mannerism previously insufferably Gryffindor and terribly arrogant and content. He watched the final breath of pride and self-righteous swagger exit in a sigh and his head remain low when he allowed the wind to take him away, rather than kicking against it with relish, rather than take a headlong dive into the night sky.

Malfoy watched until Harry disappeared, and waited a little longer still, one hand on the window and his thoughts strung out from his body and resting deep in memory. But he quickly gathered them back up, as messy a job as that had recently become. Even when he was sure he had folded them neatly up into a cupboard in his mind, and began the walk back to his bed, still gripping his broom, they quickly unraveled again and clouded his mind. He felt the Nimbus his father had bought twitch and thrum, trying to convince him to turn around and open the window again, and stood at the side of his bed, listening to it.

Why should he give in? Just because the Boy-Who-Lived had asked?

The broom twitched. He looked up at the window, and turned back around.

Well, he was simply doing what he wanted, and that could not be considered giving up at all. No, not in the least, not by anybody.


End file.
